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THE WRACK OF THE STORM 



THE WORKS OF MAURICE MAETERLINCK 

ESSAYS 

The Treasure of the Humblb 

Wisdom and Destiny 

The Life of the Bee 

The Buried Temple 

The Double Garden 

The Measure of the Hours 

On Emerson, and Other Essays 

Our Eternity 

The Unknown Guest 

The Wrack of the Storm 



PLAYS 

Sister Beatrice, and Ardiane and Barbe Bleue 

JOYZELLE, and MoNNA VANNA 

The Blue Bird, A Fairy Play 

Mary Magdalene 

Pelleas and Melisande, and Other Plays 

Princess Maleine 

The Intruder, and Other Plays 

Aglavaine and Selysette 

The Miracle of Saint Anthony 

The Betrothal; A Sequel to The Blue Bird 

Poems 

HOLIDAY EDITIONS 

Our Friend the Dog 

The Swarm 

Death 

Thoughts from Maeterlinck 

The Blue Bird 

The Life of the Bee 

News of Spring and Other Nature Studies 

The Light Beyond 



The 
Wrack of the Storm 

BY 

MAURICE MAETERLINCK 



n 



Translated by 
ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS 



« 



■> -,->-> •> 



NEW YORK 

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 

1919 



m ,-.J — \ 



\ O 



Copyright, 191 6 
By Dodd, Mead and Company, Inc. 



TRANS FHR 
B. O, PUBLIC LIBBABT 
BBPT. 10, 1940 



a. 



author's preface 

The reader taking up this volume will, for 
the first time In the work of one who 
hitherto had cursed no man, find words of 
hatred and malediction. I would gladly 
have avoided them, for I hold that he who 
takes upon himself to write pledges himself 
to say nothing that can derogate from the 
respect and love which we owe to all men. 
I have had to utter these words ; and I am 
as much surprised as saddened at what I 
have been constrained to say by the force 
of evenrs and of truth. I loved Ger- 
many and numbered friends there, who 
now, dead or living, are alike dead to me. 
I thought her great and upright and gen- 
erous; and to me she was ever kindly and 
hospitable. But there are crimes that oblit- 
erate the past and close the future. In re- 

S 



Author's Preface 

jecting hatred I should have shown myself 
a traitor to love. 

I tried to lift myself above the fray; 
but, the higher I rose, the more I saw of 
the madness and the horror of it, of the 
justice of one cause and the infamy of the 
other. It is possible that one day, when 
time has wearied remembrance and re- 
stored the ruins, wise men will tell us that 
we were mistaken and that our standpoint 
was not lofty enough; but they will say it 
because they will no longer know what we 
know, nor will they have seen what we 
have seen. 

Maurice Maeterlinck. 

Nice, 19 i6. 



translator's note 

The present volume contains, In the 
chronological order in which they were pro- 
duced, all the essays published and all the 
speeches delivered by M. Maeterlinck since 
the beginning of the war, upon which, as 
will be perceived, each one of them has a 
direct bearing. They are printed as writ- 
ten; and they throw an Interesting light 
upon the successive phases of the author's 
psychology during the Titanic and hideous 
struggle that has affected the mental atti- 
tude of us all. 

In Italy forms the preface to M. Jules 
Destree's book. En Italie avant la guerre, 
igi4-i^. Of the remaining essays, some 
have appeared in various English and 
American periodicals; others are now 
printed in translation for the first time. 

7 



Translator's Note 

I have also had M. Maeterlinck's leave 
to include in this volume his first published 
work, The Massacre of the Innocents, 
This powerful sketch in the Flemish man- 
ner saw the light originally in the Pleiade, 
in 1886, and may at the present time, to 
use the author's own words in a note to my- 
self, be regarded as "a sort of vague sym- 
bolic prophecy." An English version by 
Mrs. Edith Wingate Kinder was printed in 
the Dome in 1899; another has since been 
issued by an English and by an American 
firm of publishers ; but the only authorized 
translation to appear in book form is that 
now added as an epilogue to The Wrack of 
the Storm. 

Alexander Teixeira de Mattos. 

Chelsea, 19 16. 



CONTENTS 



author's preface 

translator's note 

i after the victory 
h king albert 
hi the hostage cities 
iv to save four cities 
v pro patria: i . . . 

vi heroism 

vii pro patria: ii . . . 
viii pro patria: hi 
IX Belgium's flag day 

X ON THE DEATH OF A LITTLE 
SOLDIER .... 
XI THE HOUR OF DESTINY . 
XII IN ITALY .... 

XIII ON REREADING THUCYDIDES 

XIV THE DEAD DO NOT DIE . 

9 



PAGE 

5 

7 
II 

21 

31 
37 
45 
59 
75 
89 
109 

117 

131 

147 
161 

179 



Contents 

PAOK 

XV IN MEMORIAM . . . . I9I 
XVI SUPERNATURAL COMMUNICA- 
TIONS IN WAR-TIME . . 197 
XVII EDITH CAVELL . . . . 217 
XVIII THE LIFE OF THE DEAD . . 229 
XIX THE WAR AND THE PROPHETS 24 1 
XX THE WILL OF EARTH . . 257 

XXI FOR POLAND 27 1 

XXII THE MIGHT OF THE DEAD , 279 

XXIII WHEN THE WAR IS OVER . 29 1 

XXIV THE MASSACRE OF THE INNO- 

CENTS 303 



10 



AFTER THE VICTORS 



THE WRACK OF THE STORM 

I 

AFTER THE VICTORY^ 
I 

AT THESE moments of tragedy, none 
should be allowed to speak who can- 
not shoulder a rifle, for the written word 
seems so monstrously useless, so over- 
whelmingly trivial, in front of this mighty 
drama which shall for a long time, it may 
be for ever, free mankind from the scourge 
of war: the one scourge among all that 
cannot be excused, that cannot be explained, 
since alone among all it issues entire from 
the hands of man. 

2 

But it is while this scourge is upon us, 
while we have our being in its very centre, 

^Translated by Alfred Sutro. 

13 



The Wrack of the Storm 

that we shall do well to balance the guilt 
of those who have committed this inexpi- 
able crime. It is now, while we are in the 
thick of the horror, undergoing it, feeling 
it, that we have the energy, the clear- 
sightedness needed to judge it; from the 
depths of the most fearful injustice justice 
is best perceived. When the hour shall 
have come for settling accounts — and it 
will not long delay — ^we shall have for- 
gotten much of what we have suffered and 
a blameworthy pity will creep over us and 
cloud our eyes. This is the moment, 
therefore, for us to frame our inexorable 
resolution. After the final victory, when 
the enemy is crushed — as crushed he will 
be — efforts will be made to enlist our sym- 
pathy, to move us to pity. We shall be told 
that the unfortunate German people were 
merely the victims of their monarch and 
their feudal caste; that no blame attaches 
to the Germany we know, which is so sym- 

14 



After the Victory 

pathetic and so cordial — the Germany of 
quaint old houses and open-hearted greet- 
ing, the Germany that sits under its lime- 
trees beneath the clear light of the moon — 
but only to Prussia, hateful, arrogant Prus- 
sia; that the homely, peace-loving, Bavar- 
ian, the genial and hospitable dwellers on 
the banks of the Rhine, the Silesian and 
Saxon and I know not who besides — for all 
these will suddenly have become whiter 
than snow and more inoffensive than the 
sheep in an English fold — that they all 
have merely obeyed, have been compelled 
to obey orders which they detested but 
were unable to resist. We are face to face 
with reality now ; let us look at It well and 
pronounce our sentence; for this is the 
moment when we hold the proofs in our 
hands, when the elements of crime are hot 
before us and shout out the truth that soon 
will fade from our memory. Let us tell 
ourselves now, therefore, now, that all that 

15 



The Wrack of the Storm 

we shall be told hereafter will be false; 
and let us unflinchingly adhere to what we 
decide at this moment, when the glare of 
the horror is on us 

3 

It is not true that in this gigantic crime 
there are innocent and guilty, or degrees 
of guilt. They stand on one level, all 
those who have taken part in it. The 
German from the North has no more spe- 
cial craving for blood and outrage than he 
from the South has special tenderness or 
pity. It is, very simply, the German, from 
one end of his country to the other, who 
stands revealed as a beast of prey which 
the firm will of our planet finally repudiates. 
We have here no wretched slaves dragged 
along by a tyrant king who alone is respon- 
sible. Nations have the government which 
they deserve, or rather, the government 
which they have is truly no more than the 

i6 



After the Victory 

magnified and public projection of the pri- 
vate morality and mentality of the nation. 
If eighty million innocent people select and 
support a monstrous king, those eighty mil- 
lion innocent people merely expose the in- 
herent falseness and superficiality of their 
innocence; and it Is the monster they 
maintain at their head who stands for all 
that is true in their nature, because it is he 
who represents the eternal aspirations of 
their race, which lie far deeper than their 
apparent and transient virtues. Let there 
be no suggestion of error, of having been 
led astray, of an intelligent people having 
been tricked or misled. No nation can be 
deceived that does not wish to be deceived; 
and it Is not intelligence that Germany 
lacks. In the sphere of Intellect such things 
are not possible; nor In the region of en- 
lightened, reflecting will. No nation per- 
mits herself to be coerced to the one crime 
that man cannot pardon. It Is of her own 

17 



The Wrack of the Storm 

Accord that she hastens towards It; her 
chief has no need to persuade, it is she 
who urges him on. 

4 

We have forces here quite different from 
those on the surface, forces that are secret, 
irresistible and profound. It is these that 
we must judge, these that we must crush 
under our heel, once and for all; for they 
are the only ones that will not be im- 
proved or softened or brought into line by 
experience or progress, or even by the bit- 
terest lesson. They are unalterable and im- 
movable, their springs lie far beneath hope 
or influence ; and they must be destroyed as 
we destroy a nest of wasps, since we know 
that these never can change into a nest 
of bees. And, even though individually 
and singly the Germans were all innocent 
and merely led astray, they would be none 
the less guilty in the mass. This is the 

i8 



After the Victory 

guilt that counts, that alone Is actual and 
real, because It lays bare, underneath their 
superficial innocence, the subconscious cri- 
minality of all. 

* 

5 

No influence can prevail on the uncon- 
scious or the subconscious. It never 
evolves. Let there come a thousand years 
of civilization, a thousand years of peace, 
with all possible refinements of art and 
education, the subconscious element of the 
German spirit, which is its unvarying ele- 
ment, will remain absolutely the same as 
it Is to-day and would declare itself, when 
the opportunity came, under the same a- 
spect, with the same Infamy. Through the 
whole course of history, two distinct will- 
powers have been noticed that would seem 
to be the opposed, elemental manifesta- 
tions of the spirit of our globe, the one 
seeking only evil, injustice, tyranny and suf- 

19 



The Wrack of the Storm 

fering, while the other strives for Hberty, 
the right, radiance and joy. These two 
powers stand once again face to face; our 
opportunity is now to annihilate the one 
that comes from below. Let us know how 
to be pitiless that we may have no more 
need for pity. It is a measure of organic 
defence. It is essential that the modern 
world should stamp out Prussian militar- 
ism as it would stamp out a poisonous fun- 
gus that for half a century had disturbed 
and polluted its days. The health of our 
planet is in question. To-morrow the 
United States of Europe will have to take 
measures for the convalescence of the 
earth. 



20 



KING ALBERT 



II 

KING ALBERT 
I 

OF all the heroes of this stupendous 
war, heroes who will live in the 
memory of man, one assuredly of the most 
unsullied, one of those whom we can never 
love enough, is the great young king of my 
little country. 

He was indeed at the critical hour the 
appointed man, the man for whom every 
heart was waiting. With sudden beauty 
he embodied the mighty voice of his people. 
He stood, upon the moment, for Belgium, 
revealed unto herself and unto others. He 
had the wonderful good fortune to realize 
and bestow a conscience in one of those 
dread hours of tragedy and perplexity 
when the best of consciences waver. 

22, 



The Wrack of the Storm 

Had he not been at hand, there is no 
doubt but that all would have happened 
differently; and history would have lost one 
of her fairest and noblest pages. Certainly 
Belgium would have been loyal and true to 
her word; and any government would 
have been swept away, pitilessly and irre- 
sistibly, by the indignation of a people that 
had never, however far we probe into the 
past, played false. But there would have 
been much of that confusion and irresolu- 
tion inevitable in a host suddenly threat- 
ened with disaster. There would have been 
vain talking, mistaken measures, excusable 
but irreparable vacillations ; and, above all, 
the much-needed words, the precise and 
final words, would not have been spoken 
and the deeds, than which we can picture 
none more resolute, none greater, would 
not have been done at the right moment. 

Thanks to the king, the peerless act 
shines forth and is maintained complete, 

24 



King Albert 

unfaltering; and the path of heroism is 
straight and clearly defined and splendid as 
that of Thermopylae indefinitely extended. 

2 

But what he has suffered, what he suffers 
day by day only those can understand who 
have had the privilege of access to this 
hero; the most sensitive and the gentlest of 
men, silent and reserved; a man of con- 
trolled emotions, modest with a timidity 
that is at once baffling and delightful; 
loving his people less as a father loves his 
children than as a son loves his adoring 
mother. Of all that cherished kingdom, 
his pride and his joy, the seat of his happi- 
ness, the centre of his love and his security, 
there Is left intact but a handful of cities, 
which are threatened at every moment by 
the foulest invader that the world has ever 
borne. 

All the others — so quaint or so beautiful, 
so bright, so serene, happy to be there, so 

25 



The Wrack of the Storm 

inoffensive — ^jewels in the crown of Peace, 
models of pure and upright family life, 
homes of loyal and dutiful industry, of 
ready, ever-smiling geniality, with the na- 
tural welcome, the ever-proffered hand and 
the ever-open heart : all the others are dead 
cities, of which not one stone is left upon 
another; and the very country-side, one of 
the fairest in this world, with its gentle 
pastures, is now no more than one vast field 
of horror. 

Treasures have perished that were num- 
bered among the noblest and dearest pos- 
sessions of mankind; monuments have dis- 
appeared which nothing can replace; and 
the half of a nation, among all nations the 
most attached to its old simple habits, its 
humble homes, is at present wandering 
along the roads of Europe. Thousands of 
innocent people have been massacred; and 
of those who remain nearly all are doomed 
to poverty and hunger. 

26 



King Albert 

But that remainder has but one soul, 
which has taken refuge in the spacious soul 
of its king. Not a murmur, not a word 
of reproach! But yesterday a town of 
thirty thousand inhabitants received the or- 
der to forsake its white houses, its churches, 
its ancient streets and squares, the scene of 
a light-hearted and industrious life. The 
thirty thousand inhabitants, women and 
children and old men, set forth to seek an 
uncertain refuge in a neighbouring city, 
which is threatened almost as directly as 
their own and which to-morrow, It may be, 
must in its turn set forth, but whither none 
can say, for the country Is so small that 
its boundaries are quickly reached. Its shel- 
ter soon exhausted. 

No matter : they obey In silence and one 
and all approve and bless their sovereign. 
He did what had to be done, what every 
one in his place would have done; and, 
though they are all suffering as no people 

27 



The Wrack of the Storm 

has suffered since the barbarous invasions 
of the earhest ages, they know that he suf- 
fers more than any of them, for in him 
all their sorrows find a goal ; in him they 
are reflected and enhanced. They do not 
even harbour the idea that they might have 
been saved by a sacrifice of honour. They 
draw no distinction between duty and des- 
tiny. To them that duty, with its fright- 
ful consequences, seems as inevitable as a 
natural force against which we cannot even 
dream of struggling, so great is it and so 
invincible. 

3 
Here is an example of the collective 

bravery of nameless heroes, an ingenuous 

and almost unconscious courage, which 

rivals and at times exceeds the most exalted 

deeds in legend and history, for since the 

days of the great martyrs men have never 

suffered death more simply for a simple 

idea. 

28 



King Albert 

And, If amid the anguish of our struggle 
It were seemly to speak of aught but tears 
and lamentations, we should find a mag- 
nificent consolation In the spectacle of the 
unexpected heroism that suddenly sur- 
rounds us on every side. It may well be 
said that never In the memory of mankind 
have men sacrificed their lives with such 
zest, such self-abnegation, such enthusiasm ; 
and that the Immortal virtues which to this 
day have uplifted and preserved the flower 
of the human race have never shone more 
brilliantly, never manifested greater power, 
energy or youth. 



29 



THE HOSTAGE CITIES 



Ill 

THE HOSTAGE CITIES 
I 

THANKS to the heroism of the Allies, 
the hour is approaching when the 
hordes of William the Madman will quit 
the soil of afflicted Belgium. 

After what they have done in cold blood, 
what excesses, what disasters must we not 
expect of the last convulsions of their rage? 
Our anguish is all the more poignant in that 
they are at this moment fighting in the most 
ancient a^nd most precious portion of Flan- 
ders. Above all countries, this is historic 
and hallowed land. They have destroyed 
Termonde, Roulers, Charleroi, Mons, Na- 
mur, Thielt and more besides; happy, 
charming little towns, which will rise again 
from their ashes, more beautiful than be- 

33 



The Wrack of the Storm 

fore. They have annihilated Louvaln and 
Mallnes ; they have but lately levelled Dix- 
mude; their torches, their incendiary 
squirts and their bombs are about to attack 
Brussels, Antwerp, Ghent, Bruges, Ypres 
and Furnes, which are like so many living 
museums, forming one of the most delight- 
ful, delicate and fragile ornaments of 
Europe. The things which are beginning 
here and which may be completed would 
be Irreparable. They would mean a loss 
to our race for which nothing could atone. 
A quite peculiar aspect — familiar, kindly, 
racy of the soil and unique — of that beauty 
which a long series of comely human lives 
is able to acquire and tu hoard would dis- 
appear for ever from the face of the earth; 
and we cannot, in the trouble and confu- 
sion of these too tragic hours, realize the 
extent, the meaning or the consequences of 
such a crime. 



34 



Hostage Cities 

2 

We have made every sacrifice without 
complaining; but this would exceed all 
measure. What can be done? How are 
we to stop them? They seem to be no 
longer accessible to reason or to any of the 
feelings which men hold In honour; they 
are sensible only to blows. Very soon, as 
they must know, we shall have the power 
to strike them shrewdly. Why do not the 
Allies, this very day, swiftly, while yet 
there Is time, name so many hostage cities, 
which would be answerable, stone for 
stone, for the existence of our own dear 
towns? If Brussels, for example, should 
be destroyed, then Berlin should be razed 
to the ground. If Antwerp were devas- 
tated, Hamburg would disappear. Nu- 
remburg would guarantee Bruges ; Munich 
would stand surety for Ghent. 

At the present moment, when they are 
feeling the wind of defeat that blows 

35 



The Wrack of the Storm 

through their tattered standard, it is pos- 
sible that this solemn threat, officially pro- 
nounced, would force them to reflect, if 
indeed they are still at all capable of re- 
flection. It is the only expedient that re- 
mains to us and there is no time to be lost. 
With certain adversaries the most barbar- 
ous threats are legitimate and necessary, 
for these threats speak the only language 
which they can understand. And our child- 
ren must not one day be able to reproach 
us with not having attempted everything — 
even that which is most repugnant — to 
save the treasures which are theirs by right. 



36 



TO SAVE FOUR CITIES 



IV 

TO SAVE FOUR CITIES 
I 

FIRST Louvain, Malines, Termonde, 
Lierre, DIxmude, Nieuport (and I 
am speaking only of the disasters of Flan- 
ders) ; now Ypres Is no more and Furnes 
is half In ruins. By the side of the great 
Flemish cities, Brussels, Antwerp, Ghent 
and Bruges, those vast and incomparable 
living museums which have been watchfully 
preserved by a whole people, a people 
above all others attached to its traditions, 
they formed a constellation of little towns, 
delightful and hospitable, too little known 
to travellers. Each of them wore its own 
expression, of peace, pleasantness, innocent 
mirth, or meditation. Each possessed its 
treasures, jealously guarded: its belfries, 
its churches, its canals, its old bridges, its 

39 



The Wrack of the Storm 

quiet convents, Its ancient houses, which 
gave it a special physiognomy, never to be 
forgotten by those who had beheld It. 

But the Indisputable queen of these 
beautiful forsaken cities was Ypres, with 
Its enormous market-place, bordered by 
little dwelling-houses with stepped gables, 
and its prodigious market-buildings, which 
occupied one whole side of the Immense 
oblong. This market-place haunted for 
ever the memory of those who had seen 
it, were It but once, while waiting to change 
trains ; It was so unexpected, so magical, so 
dream-like almost, in its disproportion to 
the rest of the town. While the ancient 
city, whose life had withdrawn Itself from 
century to century, was gradually shrinking 
all around it, the GrandTlace itself re- 
mained an immovable, gigantic, magnifi- 
cent witness to the might and opulence of 
old, when Ypres was, with Ghent and Bru- 
ges, one of the three queens of the western 

40 



To Save Four Cities 

world, one of the most strenuous centres 
of human industry and activity and the 
cradle of our great liberties. Such as it 
was yesterday — alas, that I cannot say, 
such as it is to-day ! — this square, with the 
enormous but unspeakably harmonious 
mass of those market-buildings, at once 
powerful and graceful, wild, gloomy^ 
proud, yet genial, was one, of the most 
wonderful and perfect spectacles that could 
be seen in any town on this old earth of 
ours. While of a different order of ar- 
chitecture, built of other elements and 
standing under sterner skies, it should have 
been as precious to man, as sacred and as 
intangible as the Piazza di San Marco at 
Venice, the SIgnoria at Florence or the 
Piazza del Duomo at Pisa. It constituted 
a peerless specimen of art, which at all 
times wrung a cry of admiration from the 
most indifferent, an ornament which men 
hoped was imperishable, one of those things 

41 



The Wrack of the Storm 

of beauty which, in the words of the poet, 
are a joy forever. 



I cannot beheve that it no longer exists ; 
and yet in this horrible war we have to 
believe everything and, above all, the worst. 
Now, fatally and inevitably, it will be the 
turn of the Belfry of Bruges ; and then the 
tide of barbarians will rise against Ghent 
and Antwerp and Brussels; and there will 
forthwith disappear one of those portions 
of the world's surface in which was hoarded 
the greatest wealth of beauty and of mem- 
ories and of the stuff of history. We did 
what we could to preserve it; we could do 
no more. The most heroic of armies are 
powerless to prevent the bandits whom they 
are driving back from murdering the 
women and children or from deliberately 
and uselessly destroying all that they find 

along their path of retreat. There is only 

42 



To Save Four Cities 

one hope left us: the Immediate and im- 
perious intervention of the neutral powers. 
It is towards them that we turn our tor- 
tured gaze. Two great nations notably — 
Italy and the United States — hold in their 
hands the fate of these last treasures, whose 
loss would one day be reckoned among the 
heaviest and the most irreparable that have 
been suffered in the course of long cen- 
turies of human civilization. They can do 
what they will; it is time for them to do 
that which it is no longer lawful to leave 
undone. By its frantic lies, the beast from 
over the Rhine, standing at bay and in peril 
of death, shows plainly enough the import- 
ance which it attaches to the opinion of 
the only nations which the execration of all 
that lives and breathes have not yet armed 
against it. It is afraid. It feels that all 
is crumbling under foot, that it is being 
shunned and abandoned. It seeks in every 
direction a glance that does not curse it. 
It must not, it shall not find that glance. 

43 



The Wrack of the Storm - 

It is not necessary to tell Italy what 
our Imperilled cities are worth; for Italy 
IS preeminently the land of noble cities. 

Our cause is her cause; she owes us her 
support. When a work of beauty is de- 
stroyed, her own genius and her own eter- 
nal gods are outraged. As for America, 
she more than any other country stands for 
the future. She should think of the days 
that will follow after this war. When the 
great peace descends upon the earth, let 
not the earth be found desert and robbed 

of all Its jewels. The places at which 
the earth is beautiful because of centuries 
of effort, because of the successful zeal and 
patience and genius of a race, are not so 
many. This corner of Flanders, over 
which death now hovers, Is one of those 
consecrated spots. Were it to perish, men 
as yet unborn, men who at last, perhaps, 
will achieve happiness, would lack memor- 
ies and examples which nothing could re- 
place. 

44 



PRO patria: I 



V 

PRO PATRIA: I^ 
I 

I NEED not here recall the events that 
hurled Belgium into the depths of dis- 
tress most glorious where she is struggling 
to-day. She has been punished as never 
nation was punished for doing her duty as 
never nation did before. She saved the 
world while knowing that she could not be 
saved. She saved it by flinging herself in 
the path of the oncoming barbarians, by 
allowing herself to be trampled to death 
in order to give the defenders of justice 
time, not to rescue her, for she was well 
aware that rescue could not come in time, 
but to collect the forces needed to save our 
Latin civilization from the greatest dan- 

1 Delivered at the Scala Theatre, Milan, 30 Novem- 
ber, X914. 

47 



The Wrack of the Storm 

ger that has ever threatened it. She has 
thus done this civilization, which is the only 
one whereunder the majority of men are 
willing or able to live, a service exactly 
similar to that which Greece, at the time of 
the great Asiatic invasions, rendered to the 
mother of this civilization. But, while 
the service is similar, the act surpasses all 
comparison. We may ransack history in 
vain for aught to approach it in grand- 
eur. The magnificent sacrifice at Ther- 
mopylae, which is perhaps the noblest action 
in the annals of war, is illumined with an 
equally heroic but less ideal light, for it 
was less disinterested and more material. 
Leonidas and his three hundred Spartans 
were in fact defending their homes, their 
wives, their children, all the realities which 
they had left behind them. King Albert 
and his Belgians, on the other hand, knew 
full well that, in barring the invader^s road, 
they were inevitably sacrificing their homes, 

48 



Pro Patria: I 

their wives and their children. Unlike the 
heroes of Sparta, instead of possessing an 
imperative and vital interest in fighting, 
they had everything to gain by not lighting 
and nothing to lose — save honour. In the 
one scale were fire and the sword, ruin, 
massacre, the infinite disaster which we 
see; in the other was that little word hon- 
our, which also represents infinite things, 
but things which we do not see, or which 
we must be very pure and very great to see 
quite clearly. It has happened now and 
again in history that a man standing higher 
than his fellows perceives what this word 
represents and sacrifices his life and the 
life of those whom he loves to what he 
perceives ; and we have not without reason 
devoted to such men a sort of cult that 
places them almost on a level with the gods. 
But what had never yet happened — and I 
say this without fear of contradiction from 
whosoever cares to search the memory of 

49 



. The Wrack of the Storm 

man — Is that a whole people, great and 
small, rich and poor, learned and Ignorant, 
deliberately Immolated Itself thus for the 
sake of an unseen thing. 

And observe that we are not discussing 
one of those heroic resolutions which are 
taken In a moment of enthusiasm, when 
man easily surpasses himself, and which 
have not to be maintained when, forget- 
ting his Intoxication, he lapses on the mor- 
row to the dead level of his everyday life. 
We are concerned with a resolution that 
has had to be taken and maintained every 
morning, for nov/ nearly four months. In 
the midst of dally Increasing distress and 
disaster. And not only has this resolution 
not wavered by a hair's breadth, but It 
grows as steadily as the national misfor- 
tune; and to-day, when this misfortune Is 
reaching Its full, the national resolution Is 

50 



Pro Patria: I 

likewise attaining its zenith. I have seen 
many, of my refugee fellow-countrymen: 
some used to be rich and had lost their all ; 
others were poor before the war and now 
no longer owned even what the poorest 
own. I have received many letters from 
every part of Europe where duty's exiles 
had sought a brief instant of repose. In 
them there was lamentation, as was only 
too natural, but not a reproach, not a re- 
gret, not a word of recrimination. I did 
not once come upon that hopeless but ex- 
cusable cry which, one would think, might 
so easily have sprung from despairing lips : 

"If our king had not done what he did, 
we should not be suffering what we arc 
suffering to-day." 

The idea does not even occur to them. 
It is as though this thought were not of 
those which can live in that atmosphere 
purified by misfortune. They are not re- 
signed, for to be resigned means to renounce 

SI 



The Wrack of the Storm 

the strife, no longer to keep up one's cour- 
age. They are proud and happy In their 
distress. They have a vague feeling that 
this distress will regenerate them after the 
manner of a baptism of faith and glory 
and ennoble them for all time in the re- 
membrance of men. An unexpected 
breath, coming from the secret reserves of 
the human race and from the summits of 
the human heart, has suddenly passed over 
their lives and given them a single soul, 
formed of the same heroic substance as 
that of their great king. 

3 

They have done what had never before 
been done; and It is to be hoped for the 
happiness of mankind that no nation will 
ever again be called upon for a like sacri- 
fice. But this wonderful example will not 
be lost, even though there be no longer any 
occasion to imitate it. At a time when 

52 



Pro Patria: I 

the universal conscience seemed about to 
bend under the weight of long prosperity 
and selfish materialism, suddenly it raised 
by several degrees what we may term the 
political morality of the world and lifted 
it all at once to a height which it had not 
yet reached and from which it will never 
again be able to descend, for there are 
actions so glorious, actions which fill so 
great a place in our memory, that they 
found a sort of new religion and definitely 
fix the limits of the human conscience and 
of human loyalty and courage. 

They have really, as I have already said 
and as history will one day establish with 
greater eloquence and authority than mine, 
they have really saved Latin civilization. 
They had stood for centuries at the junc- 
tion of two powerful and hostile forms of 
culture. They had to choose and they did 
not hesitate. Their choice was all the 
more significant, all the more instructive, 

53 



The Wrack of the Storm 

Inasmuch as none was so well qualified as 
they to choose with a full knowledge of 
what they were doing. You are all aware 
that more than half of Belgium is of Teu- 
tonic stock. She was therefore, thanks to 
her racial affinities, better able than any 
other to understand the culture that was 
being offered her, together with the imputa- 
tion of dishonour which it included. She 
understood it so well that she rejected it 
with an outbreak of horror and disgust un- 
paralleled in violence, spontaneous, unani- 
mous and irresistible, thus pronouncing a 
verdict from which there was no appeal 
and giving the world a peremptory lesson 
sealed with every drop of her blood. 

4 
But to-day she is at the end of her re- 
sources. She has exhausted not her cour- 
age but her strength. She has paid with 
all that she possesses for the immense ser- 

54 



Pro Patria: I 

vice which she has rendered to mankind. 
Thousands and thousands of her children 
are dead; all her riches have perished; 
almost all her historic memories, which 
were her pride and her delight, almost all 
her artistic treasures, which were num- 
bered among the fairest in this world, are 
destroyed for ever. She is nothing more 
than a desert whence stand out, more or 
less intact, four great towns alone, four 
towns which the Rhenish hordes, for whom 
the epithet of barbarians is in point of fact 
too honourable, appear to have spared only 
so that they may keep back one last and 
monstrous revenge for the day of the in- 
evitable rout. It is certain that Antwerp, 
Ghent, Bruges and Brussels are doomed be- 
yond recall. In particular, the admirable 
Grand'place, the Hotel de Ville and the 
Cathedral at Brussels are, I know, under- 
mined: I repeat, I know it from private 
and trustworthy testimony against which 

55 



The Wrack of the Storm 

no denial can prevail. A spark will be 
enough to turn one of the recognized mar- 
vels of Europe into a heap of ruins like 
those of Ypres, Malines and Louvain. 
Soon after — for, short of immediate inter- 
vention, the disaster is as certain as though 
it were already accomplished — Bruges, 
Antwerp and Ghent will suffer the same 
fate; and in a moment, as I was saying 
the other day, there will vanish from sight 
one of the corners of this earth in which 
the greatest store of memories, of historic 
matter and artistic beauties had been accu- 
mulated. 

5 
The time has come to end this foolery I 

The time has come for everything that 
draws breath to rise up against these sys- 
tematic, insane and stupid acts of destruc- 
tion, perpetrated without any military ex- 
cuse or strategic object. The reason why 
we are at last uttering a great cry of dls- 

56 



Pro Patria; I 

tress, we who are above all a silent people, 
the reason why we turn to your mighty and 
noble country Is that Italy Is to-day the 
only European power that is still in a posi- 
tion to stop the unchained brute on the 
brink of his crime. You are ready. You 
have but to stretch out a hand to save us. 
We have not come to beg for our lives: 
these no longer count with us and we have 
already offered them up. But, in the name 
of the last beautiful things that the bar- 
barians have left us, we come with our 
prayers to the land of all beautiful things. 
It must not be, It shall not be that, on the 
day when at last we return, not to our 
homes, for most of these are destroyed, 
but to our native soil, that soil is so laid 
waste as to have become an unrecognizable 
desert. You know better than any others 
what -memories mean, what masterpieces 
mean to a nation, for your country is co- 
vered with memories and masterpieces. It 

57 



The Wrack of the Storm 

IS also the land of justice and the cradle 
of the law, which Is simply justice that has 
taken cognizance of itself. On this ac- 
count, Italy owes us justice. And she 
owes it to herself to put a stop to the great- 
est Iniquity in the annals of history, for not 
to put a stop to it when one has the power 
is almost tantamount to taking part in it. 
It Is for Italy as much as for France that 
we have suffered. She Is the source, she 
is the very mother of the ideal for which 
we have fought and for which the last of 
our soldiers are still fighting in the last 
of our trenches. 



58 



HEROISM 



VI 

HEROISM 
I 

ONE of the consoling surprises of this 
war is the unlooked-for and, so to 
speak, universal heroism which it has re- 
vealed among all the nations taking part 
in it. 

We were rather inclined to believe that 
courage, physical and moral fortitude, self- 
denial, stoicism, the renunciation of every 
sort of comfort, the faculty of self-sacrifice 
and the power of facing death belonged 
only to the more primitive, the less happy, 
the less intelligent nations, to the nations 
least capable of reasoning, of appreciating 
danger and of picturing in their imagination 
the dreadful abyss that separates this life 
from the life unknown. We were even 

6i 



The Wrack of the Storm 

almost persuaded that war would one day 
cease for lack of soldiers, that is to say, of 
men foolish enough or unhappy enough to 
risk the only absolute realities — health, 
physical comfort, an unimpaired body and, 
above all, life, the greatest of earthly pos- 
sessions — for the sake of an ideal which, 
like all ideals, is more or less invisible. 

And this argument seemed the more na- 
tural and convincing because, as existence 
grew gentler and men's nerves more sen- 
sitive, the means of destruction by war 
showed themselves more cruel, ruthless 
and irresistible. It seemed more and more 
probable that no man would ever again 
endure\ the infernal horrors of a battle- 
field and that, after the first slaughter, the 
opposing armies, officers and men alike, 
all seized with insuppresslble panic, would 
turn their backs upon one another, in si- 
multaneous, supernatural affright, and flee 
from unearthly terrors exceeding the most 

62 



Heroism 

monstrous anticipations of those who had 
let them loose. 

2 

To our great astonishment the very op- 
posite is now proclaimed. 

We realize with amazement that until 
to-day we had but an incomplete and inac- 
curate conception of man's courage. We 
looked upon it as an exceptional virtue and 
one which is the more admired as being 
also the rarer the farther we go back in 
history. Remember, for instance, Homer's 
heroes, the ancestors of all the heroes of 
our day. Study them closely. These 
models of antiquity, the first professors, 
the first masters of bravery, are not really 
very brave. They have a wholesome 
dread of being hit or wounded and an in- 
genuous and manifest fear of death. Their 
mighty conflicts are declamatory and deco- 
rative but not so very bloody; they in- 
flict more noise than pain upon their ad- 

63 



The Wrack of the Storm 

versaries, they deliver many more words 
than blows. Their defensive weapons — 
and this is characteristic — are greatly su- 
perior to their arms of offence; and death 
is an unusual, unforeseen and almost in- 
decorous event which throws the ranks into 
disorder and most often puts a stop to the 
combat or provokes a headlong flight that 
seems quite natural. As for the wounds, 
these are enumerated and described, sung 
and deplored as so many remarkable phe- 
nomena. On the other hand, the most 
discreditable routs, the most shameful 
panics are frequent; and the old poet re- 
lates them, without condemning them, as 
ordinary incidents to be ascribed to the 
gods and inevitable in any warfare. 

This kind of courage is that of all an- 
tiquity, more or less. We will not linger 
over it, nor delay to consider the battles of 
the Middle Ages or the Renascence, in 
which the fiercest hand-to-hand encounters 

64 



Heroism 

of the mercenaries often left not more than 
half-a-dozen victims on the field. Let us 
rather come straight to the great wars of 
the Empire. Here the courage displayed 
begins to resemble our own, but with nota- 
ble differences. In the first place, those 
concerned were solely professionals. We 
see not a whole nation fighting, but a dele- 
gation, a martial selection, which, it is true, 
becomes gradually more extensive, but 
never, as in our time, embraces every man 
between eighteen and fifty years of age 
capable of shouldering a weapon. Again 
— and above all — every war was reduced 
to two or three pitched battles, that Is to 
say, two or three culminating moments; 
Immense efforts, but efforts of a few 
hours, or a day at most, towards which 
the combatants directed all the vigour and 
all the heroism accumulated during long 
weeks or months of preparation and wait- 
ing. Afterwards, whether the result was 

65 



The Wrack of the Storm 

victory or defeat, the fighting was over; 
relaxation, respite and rest followed; men 
went back to their homes. Destiny must 
not be defied more than once; and' they 
knew that in the most terrible affray the 
chances of escaping death were as twenty 
to one. 

3 

Nowadays, everything Is changed; and 
death itself is no longer what it was. For- 
merly, you looked it in the face, you knew 
whence it came and who sent it to you. It 
had a dreadful aspect, but one that re- 
mained human. Its ways were not un- 
known: its long spells of sleep, its brief 
awakenings, its bad days and dangerous 
hours. At present, to all these horrors it 
adds the great, intolerable fear of mystery. 
It no longer has any aspect, no longer has 
habits or spells of sleep and it Is never still. 
It is always ready, always on the watch, 
everywhere present, scattered, Intangible 

66 



Heroism 

and dense, stealthy and cowardly, diffuse, 
all-encompassing, innumerous, looming at 
every point of the horizon, rising from the 
waters and falling from the skies, inde- 
fatigable, inevitable, filling the whole of 
space and time for days, weeks and months 
without a minute's lull, without a second's 
intermission. Men live, move and sleep 
in the meshes of Its fatal web. They 
know that the least step to the right or left, 
a head bowed or lifted, a body bent or up- 
right Is seen by its eyes and draws its thun- 
der. 

Hitherto we had no example of this pre- 
ponderance of the destructive forces. We 
should never have believed that man's 
nerves could resist so great a trial. The 
nerves of the bravest man are tempered to 
face death for the space of a second, but 
not to live in the hourly expectation of 
death and nothing else. Heroism was 
once a sharp and rugged peak, reached for 

67 



The Wrack of the Storm 

a moment but soon quitted, for mountain- 
peaks are not inhabitable. To-day it is 
a boundless plain, as uninhabitable as the 
peaks ; but we are not permitted to descend 
from it. And so, at the very moment 
when man appeared most exhausted and 
enervated by the comforts and vices of ci- 
vilization, at the moment when he was hap- 
piest and therefore most selfish, when, pos- 
sessing the minimum of faith and vainly 
seeking a new ideal, he seemed least capable 
of sacrificing himself for an idea of any 
kind, he finds himself suddenly confronted 
with an unprecedented danger, which he 
is almost certain that the most heroic na- 
tions of history would not have faced nor 
even dreamed of facing, whereas he does 
not even dream that it is possible to do 
aught but face it. And let it not be said 
that we had no choice, that the danger and 
the struggle were thrust upon us, that we 

had to defend ourselves or die and that in 

68 



Heroism 

such cases there are no cowards. It is not 
true: there was, there always has been, 
there still is a choice. 

4 

It is not man's life that is at stake, but 
the idea which he forms of the honour, the 
happiness and the duties of his life. To 
save his life he had but to submit to the 
enemy; the invader would not have ex- 
terminated him. You cannot exterminate 
a great people; it is not even possible to 
enslave it seriously or to inflict great sorrow 
upon it for long. He had nothing to be 
afraid of except disgrace. He did not so 
much as see the infamous temptation ap- 
pear above the horizon of his most in- 
stinctive fears; he does not even suspect 
that it is able to exist; and he will never 
perceive it, whatever sacrifices may yet 
await him. We are not, therefore, speak- 
ing of a heroism that would be but the last 

69 



The Wrack of the Storm 

resource of despair, the heroism of the ani- 
mal driven to bay and fighting blindly to 
delay death's coming for a moment. No, 
it is heroism freely donned, deliberately 
and unanimously hailed, heroism on behalf 
of an idea and a sentiment, in other words, 
heroism in its clearest, purest and most 
virginal form, a disinterested and whole- 
hearted sacrifice for that which men regard 
as their duty to themselves, to their kith 
and kin, to mankind and to the future. If 
life and personal safety were more precious 
than the Idea of honour, of patriotism and 
of fidelity to tradition and the race, there 
was, I repeat, and there is still a choice 
to be made ; and never perhaps in any war 
was the choice easier, for never did men 
feel more free, never indeed were they 
more free to choose. 

But this choice, as I have said, did not 
dare show its faintest shadow on the lowest 
horizons of even the most ignoble con- 

70 



Heroism 

sciences. Are you quite sure that, in other 
times which we think better and more vir- 
tuous than our own, men would not have 
seen it, would not have spoken of it? 
Can you find a nation, even among the 
greatest, which, after six months of a war 
compared with which all other wars seem 
child's-play, of a war which threatens and 
uses up all that nation's life and all its 
possessions, can you find, I say, in history, 
not an instance — for there is no instance — 
but some similar case which allows you to 
presume that the nation would not have 
faltered, would not at least, were it but for 
a second, have looked down and cast its 
eyes upon an inglorious peace? 

5 

Nevertheless, they seemed much stronger 

than we are, all those who came before 

us. They were rude, austere, much closer 

to nature, poor and often unhappy. They 

71 



The Wrack of the Storm 

had a simpler and a more rigid code of 
thought; they had the habit of physical 
suffering, of hardship and of death. But I 
do not believe that any one dares contend 
that these men would have done what our 
soldiers are now doing, that they would 
have endured what is being endured all 
around us. Are we not entitled to con- 
clude from this that civilization, contrary 
to what was feared, so far from enervating, 
depraving, weakening, lowering and dwarf- 
ing man, elevates him, purifies him, 
strengthens him, ennobles him, makes him 
capable of acts of sacrifice, generosity and 
courage which he did not know before? 
The fact is that civilization, even when it 
seems to entail corruption, brings intelli- 
gence with it and that intelligence. In days 
of trial, stands for potential pride, nobility 
and heroism. That, as I said In the be- 
ginning, is the unexpected and consoling 
revelation of this horrible war : we can rely 

72 



Heroism 

on man implicitly, place the greatest trust 
in him, nor fear lest, in laying aside 
his primitive brutality, he should lose his 
manly qualities. The greater his progress 
in the conquest of nature and the greater 
his apparent attachment to material wel- 
fare, the more does he become capable, 
nevertheless, unconsciously, deep down in 
the best part of him, of self-detachment 
and of self-sacrifice for the common safety 
and the more does he understand that he is 
nothing when he compares himself with the 
eternal life of his forbears and his children. 
It was so great a trial that we dared not, 
before this war, have contemplated it. 
The future of the human race was at stake ; 
and the magnificent response that comes to 
us from every side reassures us fully as to 
the issue of other struggles, more for- 
midable still, which no doubt await us 
when it will be a question no longer of fight- 
ing our fellow-men, but rather of facing 

73 



The Wrack of the Storm 

the more powerful and cruel of the great 
mysterious enemies that nature holds in re- 
serve against us. If it be true, as I believe, 
that humanity is worth just as much as the 
sum total of latent heroism which it con- 
tains, then we may declare that humanity 
was never stronger nor more exemplary 
than now and that it is at this moment 
reaching one of its highest points and capa- 
ble of braving everything and hoping 
everything. And it is for this reason that, 
despite our present sadness, we are entitled 
to congratulate ourselves and to rejoice. 



74 



PRO PATRIA: II 



VII 

PRO PATRIA: II* 

I 

MORE than three months ago, I was 
in one of the grandest of your 
cities, a city that welcomed in a manner 
which I shall never forget the cause which 
I had come among you to represent. I 
was there, as I told my hearers at the time, 
in the name of the last remnants of beauty 
that the barbarians had left us, to plead 
with the land of every kind of beauty. 
Those threatened beauties, our only cities 
yet intact, the treasures and sanctuaries of 
our whole past and of all our race, are 
still reeling on the brink of the same abyss 
and, failing a miracle which we dare not 
hope for, they will suffer the fate of Ypres, 

^Delivered in Rome, before the Associazione della 
Stampa, 13 March, 1915. 

17 



The Wrack of the Storm 

Louvain, Malines, Termonde, Dixmude 
and so many other less illustrious victims. 
The danger in which they stand has no 
doubt aroused the indignation of the civil- 
ized world; but not a hand has armed itself 
to defend them. I blame no one; I re- 
proach no one; the morality of the nations 
is a virtue that has not yet emerged from 
the state of infancy; and fortunately, by 
the hazard of war, it is not yet too late to 
save four innocent cities. 

To-day I have not come to speak of 
monuments, of historical relics, nor even of 
the wrongs committed, of the violation of 
all the rights and laws of warfare and 
every international convention, of incen- 
diarism, pillage and massacre ; I have come 
simply to utter before you the last dis- 
tressful cry of a dying nation. 

At this moment a tragedy is being en- 
acted in Belgium such as has no prece- 
dent in the history of civilized peoples, nor 

78 



Pro Patria: II 

even in that of the barbarians, for the bar- 
barians, when committing their most stu- 
pendous crimes, lacked the infernal de- 
liberation and the scientific, all-powerful 
means of working evil which to-day are in 
the hands of those who profit by the re- 
sources and benefits of civilization only 
to turn them against it and to seek the 
annihilation of all its noblest and most gen- 
erous characteristics. The despairing ru- 
mours of this tragedy come to us only 
through the chinks of that ensanguined well 
which isolates it from the rest of the world. 
Nothing reaches our ears but the lies of 
the enemy. In reality, the whole of Bel- 
gium is one huge Prussian prison, where 
every cry is cruelly and methodically stifled 
and where no voices are heard save those 
of the gaolers. Only now and again, 
after a thousand adventures, despite a 
thousand perils, a letter from some 
kinsman or captive friend arrives from 

79 



The Wrack of the Storm 

the depths of that great living ceme- 
tery, bringing us a gleam of authentic 
truth. 

2 

You are as familiar with this truth as 
I am. At the moment when her soil was 
invaded, Belgium numbered seven million 
seven hundred thousand inhabitants. It is 
estimated that between two hundred and 
fifty and three hundred thousand have per- 
ished in battle or massacre, or as the result 
of misery and privation; and I am not 
speaking of the infant children, the sacri- 
fice of whom, owing to the dearth of milk, 
has, it appears, been frightful. Five or six 
hundred thousand unfortunates have fled 
to Holland, France or England. There 
remain therefore in the country nearly 
seven million inhabitants; and more than 
half of these seven millions are living 
almost exclusively on American charity. 

80 



Pro Patria : II 

In what Is above all an industrial coun- 
try, producing normally, in time of peace, 
less than a third part of the wheat ne- 
cessary for home consumption, the enemy 
has systematically requisitioned everything, 
carried off everything, for the upkeep of 
his armies, and has sent into Germany what 
he could not consume on the spot. The re- 
sult of so monstrous a proceeding may 
readily be divined: on all that soil, once 
so happy and so rich, to-day taxed and pil- 
laged and pillaged again, ravaged and 
devastated by fire and the sword, there is 
nothing left. And the situation of suffer- 
ing Belgium is so cruelly paradoxical that 
her best friends, her dearest allies, even 
those whom she has saved, are powerless 
to succour her. Isolated as she is from the 
rest of the world, she would have starved 
even though nothing had been taken from 
her. Now she has been despoiled of all 
that she possessed, while France and Eng- 



The Wrack of the Storm 

land can send her neither money nor pro- 
visions, for they would fall into the hands 
of those engaged in torturing her, so much 
so that every attempt on their part to alle- 
viate her sufferings would but retard her 
deliverance still further. Did history ever 
witness a more poignant, a more des- 
perate tragedy? It is a fact that in the 
midst of this war we are constantly find- 
ing ourselves confronted with events such 
as history hitherto has never beheld. A 
people resembling an enormous beast of 
prey, in order to punish a loyalty and 
heroism which, if it retained the slight- 
est notion of justice and injustice, the 
smallest sense of human dignity and 
honour, it ought to worship on its knees: 
this vast predatory race stealthily resolved 
to exterminate an inoffensive little nation 
whose soul it felt was too great to be en- 
slaved or reduced to the semblance of its 
conqueror's. It was on the point of suc- 

82 



Pro Patria: II 

ceeding, amid the silence, the Impotence, 
or the terror of the world, when from 
beyond the Atlantic a generous nation took 
that heroic little people under its protec- 
tion. It understood that what was In- 
volved was not merely an act of justice 
and elementary pity, but also and more 
particularly a higher duty towards the mor- 
ality and the eternal conscience of man- 
kind. Thanks to this great nation's In- 
tervention, It will not be said, In the days 
to come, that justice, loyalty, honesty and 
heroism are no more than dangerous il- 
lusions and a fooPs bargain, or that evil 
must necessarily, at all times and places, 
conquer whenever It Is backed by force, or 
that the only reward which duty magnifi- 
cently done may hope to receive on this 
earth Is every manner of grief and disaster, 
ending In death by starvation. So im- 
mense and triumphant an example of in- 
quity would strike the ideals of mankind 

83 



The Wrack of the Storm 

a blow from which they would not recover 
for centuries. 

3 

But already this help is becoming ex- 
hausted; it cannot be indefinitely prolonged; 
and very soon it will be insufficient. It is, 
moreover, at the mercy of the slightest 
diplomatic or political complication; and 
its failure will be irreparable. It will 
mean utter famine, unexampled extermina- 
tion, which till the end of the world will 
cry to heaven for vengeance. It is no 
longer a question of weeks or months, but 
one of days. That is where we stand; and 
these are the last hours granted by destiny 
to an inactive Europe wherein to expunge 
the shame of her indifference. 

These hours belong almost solely to you, 
for others have not your power. What- 
ever may happen, however long you may 
postpone the issue^ one of these days you 

84 



Pro Patria: II 

will be obliged to join in the fray. Every- 
thing advises, everything orders you to do 
so; and I can see nothing on the side of 
honour, justice or humanity, on the side 
of the will of the centuries or the human 
race, nor even on the side of prudence and 
self-interest, that allows you to avoid it. 
Is It not better and more worthy of your- 
selves than all the subtleties, plottlngs and 
petty bargainings of diplomacy? 

The one hour, the peremptory hour has 
struck when your aid can break the balance 
between the powers of good and evil which, 
for more than two hundred days, have kept 
the future of Europe hanging over the 
abyss. 

Fate has granted you the magnificent 
boon, the all but divine privilege, of saving 
from the most horrible of deaths four or 
five millions of innocent human beings, four 
or five millions of martyrs who have per- 
formed the finest action that a people could 

85 



The Wrack of the Storm 

perform and who are perishing because 
they defended the Ideals which your 
fathers taught them. I know that we are 
faced by duties which until to-day had 
never entered into the morality of States; 
for it Is but too true that this morality still 
lags a thousand miles behind that of the 
meanest peasant. But, if such a thing has 
never yet been done, it is all the more 
glorious to be the first to do it, to make 
an effort that will raise the life of na- 
tions to a level which the life of the in- 
dividual has long since attained. And no 
people is better qualified than the Italian 
to make this effort which the world and 
the future are awaiting as a deliverance. 

But I will say no more. I have been 
reproached for speaking of matters which, 
as a foreigner, I ought not to discuss. I 
believed that these great questions of hu- 
manity interested the whole human race. 
Perhaps I was wrong. I will respect the 

86 



Pro Patria : II 

profound silence in which great actions are 
developed; and I leave to the meditation 
of your hearts that which I am constrained 
to leave unsaid. They will tell you very 
much better than I could all that I had to 
say to you. 



^ 



PRO PATRIA: III 



VIII 



PRO PATRIA: III^ 



I 

ALTHOUGH nothing entitles me 
to the honour of addressing you 
in the name of my refugee countrymen, 
nevertheless it is only fitting, since a kindly 
insistence brings me here, that I should 
in the first place give thanks to England 
for the manner in which she welcomed 
them in their distress. I am but a voice 
in the crowd; and, if my words exceed the 
limits of this hall and lend to him who 
utters them an authority which he himself 
does not possess, it is only because they are 
filled with unbounded gratitude. 

In this horrible war, whose stakes are 
the salvation and the future of mankind, 

^ Delivered in London, at the Queen's Hall, 7 July, 

91 



The Wrack of the Storm 

let us first of all salute our wonderful sis- 
ter, France, who is supporting the heaviest 
burden and who, for more than eleven 
months, having broken its first and most 
formidable onslaught, has been struggling, 
foot by foot, at closest quarters, without 
faltering, without remission, with an heroic 
smile, against the most formidable organ- 
ization of pillage, massacre and devasta- 
tion that the world or hell itself has seen 
since man first learnt the history of the 
planet on which he lives. We have here a 
revelation of qualities and virtues surpass- 
ing all that we expected from a nation 
which nevertheless had accustomed us to 
expect of her all that goes to make the 
beauty and the glory of humanity. One 
must reside in France, as I have done for 
many years, to understand and admire as 
it deserves the incomparable lesson in 
courage, abnegation, firmness, determina- 
tion, coolness, conscious dignity, self-mas- 

92 



Pro Patria: III 

tery, good-humour, chivalrous generosity 
and utter charity and self-sacrifice which 
this great and noble people, which has 
civilized more than half the globe, is at 
the present moment teaching the civilized 
world. 

Let us also salute boundless Russia, with 
her wonderful soldiers, innocent and in- 
genuous as the saints of old, ignorant of 
fear as children who do not yet know the 
meaning of death. Yonder, along a for- 
midable front running from the Baltic 
to the Black Sea, with silent multitudi- 
nous heroism, amid defeats which are but 
victories delayed, she is beginning the great 
work of our deliverance. Lastly let us 
greet Servia, small but prodigious, whom 
we must one day place on the summit of 
that monument of glory which Europe will 
raise to-morrow to the memory of those 
who have freed her from her chains. 

So much for them. They have a right 

93 



The Wrack of the Storm 

to all our gratitude, to all our admiration. 
They are doing magnificently all that had 
to be done. But they occupy a place apart 
in duty's splendid hierarchy. They are the 
protagonists of direct, material, tangible, 
undeniable, inevitable duty. This war is 
their war. If they would not accept the 
worst of disgraces, if they were not pre- 
pared to suffer servitude, massacre, ruin 
and famine, they had to undertake it ; they 
could not do otherwise. They were at- 
tacked by the born enemy, the irreducible 
and absolute enemy, of whom they knew 
enough to understand that they had nothing 
to expect from him but total and unremit- 
ting disaster. It was a question- of their 
continued existence in this world. They 
had no choice; they had to defend them- 
selves; and any other nation in their place 
would have done the same, only there are 
few who would have done it with the same 
spirit of self-abnegation, the same devotion, 

94 



Pro Patria: III 

the same perseverance, the same loyalty and 
the same smiling courage. 

2 

But for us Belgians — and we may say 
as much for you English — it was not a 
question of this kind of duty. The horri- 
ble drama did not concern us. It demand- 
ed only the right to pass us by without 
touching us; and, far from doing us any 
harm, It would have flooded us with the 
unclaimed riches which armies on the 
march drag in their wake. We Belgians 
in particular, peaceable, hospitable, inof- 
fensive and almost unarmed, should, by 
the very treaties which assured our exist- 
ence, have remained complete strangers to 
this war. To be sure, we loved France, 
because we knew her as well as we knew 
ourselves and because she makes herself 
beloved by all who know her. But we en- 
tertained no hatred of Germany. It is 

9S 



The Wrack of the Storm 

true that, in spite of the virtues which we 
believed her to possess but which were 
merely the mask of a spy, our hearts barely 
responded to her obsequiously treacherous 
advances. For the German, of all the in- 
habitants of our planet, has this one and 
singular peculiarity, that he arouses in us, 
from the onset, a profound, instinctive, in- 
tuitive feeling of antipathy. But, even so 
and wherever our preferences may have 
lain, our treaties, our pledged word, the very 
reason of our existence, all forbade us to 
take part in the conflict. Then came the 
incredible ultimatum, the monstrous de- 
mand of which you know, which gave us 
twelve hours to choose between ruin and 
death or dishonour. As you also know, we 
did not need twelve hours to make our 
choice. This choice was no more than a 
cry of indignation and resolution, sponta- 
neous, fierce and irresistible. We did not 
stay for a moment to ponder the extenua- 

96 



Pro Patria: III 

ting circumstances which our weakness 
might have invoked. We did not for a mo- 
ment consider the absolution which history- 
would have granted us later, on realizing 
that a conflict between forces so completely 
disproportioned was futile, that we must 
inevitably be crushed, massacred and an- 
mhilated and that the sacrifice of a little 
people in its entirety could prevent nothing, 
could barely cause delay and would have 
no weight in the immense balance into 
which the world's destinies were about 
to be flung. There was no question of all 
this; we saw one thing only: our plighted 
word. For that word we must die; and 
since then we have been dying. Trace the 
course of history as far back as you will; 
question the nations of the earth; then 
name those who have done or who would 
have done what we did. How many will 
you find? I am not judging those whom 
I pass over in silence, for to do so would 

97 



The Wrack of the Storm 

be to enter Into the secret of men's hearts 
which I have not the right to violate; but 
in any case there is one which I can name 
aloud, without fear of being mistaken ; and 
that is the British nation. This people 
too entered into the conflict, not through 
interest or necessity or inherited hatred, but 
simply for a matter of honour. It has not 
suffered what we have suffered; it has not 
risked what we have risked, which is all 
that we possessed beneath the arch of 
heaven; but it owes this immunity only to 
outside circumstances. The principle and 
the quality of the act are the same. We 
stand on the same plane, one step higher 
than the other combatants. While the 
others are the soldiers of necessity, we are 
the volunteers of honour; and, without de- 
tracting from their merits, this title adds 
to ours all that a pure and disinterested 
idea adds to the noblest acts of courage. 
There Is not a doubt but that In our place 

98 



Pro Patria: III 

you would have done precisely what we 
did. You would have done it with the 
same simplicity, the same calm and con- 
fident ardour, the same good faith. You 
would have thrown yourselves into the 
breach as whole-heartedly, with the same 
scorn of useless phrases and the same stub- 
born conscientiousness. And the reason 
why I do not shrink from singing in your 
presence the praises of what we have done 
is that these praises also affect yourselves, 
who would not have hesitated to do the 
selfsame things. 

3 

In short, we have both the same concep- 
tion of honour; and a like idea must needs 
bear like fruits. In your eyes as in ours, 
a formal promise, a word once given is the 
most sacred thing that can pass between 
man and man. Now far more than the 
valour of a man — because it rises to much 

99 



The Wrack of the Storm 

greater heights and extends to much greater 
distances — the valour of a people depends 
upon the conception of its honour which 
that people holds and, above all, upon 
the sacrifices which it is capable of making 
for the sake of that honour. We may dif- 
fer upon all the other ideas that guide the 
actions of mankind, notably upon the re- 
ligious idea; but those who do not agree 
on this one point are unworthy of the name 
of man. It represents the purest flame, the 
ever more ardent focus of all human 
dignity and virtue. 

You have sacrificed yourselves wholly 
to this idea ; and, in the name of this idea, 
which is as vital and as powerful in your 
souls as in ours, you came to our aid, as 
we knew that you would come, for we 
counted on you as surely as you counted 
on us. You are ready to make the same 
sacrifices ; and already you are proudly sup- 
porting the heaviest of sacrifices. Thus, 

100 



Pro Patria: III 

in this stupendous struggle, we are united 
by bonds even more fraternal than those 
which bind the other Allies. Our union is 
more lofty and more generous, for it is 
based wholly upon, the noblest thoughts 
and feelings that can inspire the heart. 
And this union, which is marked by a mu- 
tual confidence and affection that grow 
hourly deeper and wider, is helping us both 
to go even beyond our duty. 

For we have gone beyond it ; and we are 
exceeding it daily. We have done and are 
doing far more than we were bound to do. 
It was for us Belgians to resist, loyally, vi- 
gorously, to the utmost of our strength, as 
we had promised. But the most sensitive 
honour would have allowed us to lay down 
our arms after the immense and heroic ef- 
fort of the first few days and to trust to 
the victor's clemency when he recognized 
that we were beaten. Nothing compelled 
us to immolate ourselves entirely, to sur« 

lOI 



The Wrack of the Storm 

render, in succession, as a burnt-offering to 
our ideals, all that we possessed on earth 
and to continue the struggle after we were 
crushed, even in the last torments of starva- 
tion, which to-day holds three millions of 
us in its grip. Nothing compelled us to 
this course, other than the increasingly lofty 
ideal of duty held by those who began by 
putting it into practice and are now living 
in its fulfilment. 

As for you English, you had to come 
to our assistance, that is to say, to send us 
the troops which you had ready under 
arms; but nothing compelled you either, 
after the first useless engagements, to de- 
vote yourselves with unparalleled ardour 
and self-sacrifice, to hurl into the mortal 
and stupendous battle the whole of your 
youth, the fairest upon earth, and all 3^our 
riches, the most prodigious in this world, 
nor to conjure up from your soil, by a 
miracle which was thought impossible, in 

102 



Pro Patria: III 

fewer months than the years that would 
have seemed needful, the most gallant, de- 
termined and tenacious armies that have 
yet been marshalled in this war. Nothing 
compelled you, save the spirit of emulation, 
the same mad love of duty, the same pas- 
sion for justice, the same Idolatry of the 
given word which, that it may be sure of 
doing all that It promised, performs far 
more than it would have dared to promise. 

4 

Now, during the last few weeks, a new 

combatant has entered the lists, one who 

occupies a place quite apart In the sacred 

hierarchy of duty and honour and in the 

moral history of this war. I speak of 

Italy; and I pay her the tribute of homage 

which is her due and which I well know 

that you will render with me, for you of all 

nations are qualified to do so. 

Italy had no treaty except with our ene- 
103 



The Wrack of the Storm 

mies. Her first act of justice, when con- 
fronted with an iniquitous aggression, was 
to discard this treaty, which was about to 
draw her into a crime which she had the 
courage to judge and condemn from the 
outset, while her former allies were still in 
the full flush of a might that seemed un- 
shakable. After this verdict, which was 
worthy of the land where justice first saw 
the light, she found herself free; she now 
owed no obligations to any one. There 
was nothing left to compel her to rush into 
this carnage, which she could contemplate 
calmly from the vantage of her delightful 
cities; and she had only to wait till the 
twelfth hour to gather its first fruits. 
There was no longer any compact, any 
written bond, signed by the hands of kings 
or peoples, that could involve her destiny. 
But now, at the spectacle, unforeseen and 
daily more abominable and disconcerting, 
of the barbarian invasion, words half- 

104 



Pro Patria: III 

effaced and secret treaties written by un- 
known hands on the souls and consciences 
of all men revealed themselves and slowly 
gathered life and radiance. To some ex- 
tent I was a witness of these things; and 
I was able, so to speak, to follow with my 
eyes the awakening and the irresistible 
promulgation of those great and mysterious 
laws of justice, pity and love which are 
higher and more imperishable than all 
those which we have engraved in marble 
or bronze. With the increase of the 
crimes, the power of these laws increased 
and extended. We may regard the inter- 
vention of Italy in many ways. Like every 
human action and, above all, like every 
political action, it is due to a thousand 
causes, many of which are trifling. Among 
them we may see the legitimate hatred and 
the eternal resentment felt towards an 
hereditary enemy. We may discover an 
interested intention to take part, without 

105 



The Wrack of the Storm 

too much risk, in a victory already cert- 
ain and In Its previously allotted spoils. 
We may see in it anything that we please : 
the resolves of men contain factors of all 
kinds ; but we must pity those who are able 
to consider none but the meaner sides of 
the matter, for these are the only sides 
which never count and which are always 
deceptive. To find the real and lasting 
truth, we must learn to view the great 
masses and the great feelings of mankind 
from above. It is in them and in their 
great and simple movements that the will 
of the soul and of destiny is asserted, for 
these two form the eternal substance of a 
people. And, in the present case, the 
movement of the great masses and the great 
feelings of the people took the form of 
an Immense impulse of sympathy and in- 
dignation, which gradually increased, pene- 
trating farther and farther into the popi:- 
lar strata and gathering volume as it pro- 

ic6 



Pro Patria: III 

gressed, until It urged a whole nation to as- 
sume the burden of a war which it knew 
to be crushing and merciless, a war which 
each of those who called for it knew to 
be a war which he himself must wage, with 
his own hands, with his own body, a war 
which would wrest him from the pleasant 
ways of peace, from his labours and his 
comforts, which would weigh terribly upon 
all those whom he loved, which would 
expose him for weeks, perhaps for months, 
to incredible sufferings and which meant 
almost certain death to a third or a half 
of those who demanded the right to 
brave it. And all this, I repeat, occurred 
without any material necessity, from no 
other motive than a fine sense of honour 
and a magnificent surge of admiration 
and pity for a small foreign nation 
that was being unjustly martyred. We 
cannot repeat it too often: here, as in 
the case of the sacrifice which Belgium 

107 



The Wrack of the Storm 

and England offered to the ideal of 
honour, is a new and unprecedented fact 
in history. 



208 



Belgium's flag day 



IX 

Belgium's flag day 

I 

TO-DAY our flag will quiver in every 
French hand as a symbol of love 
and gratitude. This day should be a day 
of hope and glory for all Belgium. 

Let us forget for a moment our terrible 
distress ; let us forget our plains and mead- 
ows, the fairest and most fertile in Europe, 
now ravaged to such a degree that 
the utmost that one can say is powerless 
to give any idea of a desolation which 
seems irremediable. Let us forget — if to 
forget them be possible — the women, the 
children, the old men, peaceable and inno- 
cent, who have been massacred in their 
thousands, the tale of whom will amaze 
the world when once the grim barrier, is 
broken behind which so many secret hor- 

III 



The Wrack of the Storm 

rors are being committed. Let us forget 
those who are dying of hunger in our coun- 
try, a land without harvests and without 
homes, a land methodically taxed, pillaged 
and crushed until it is drained of the last 
drop of its life-blood. Let us forget those 
remnants of our people who are scattered 
hither and thither, who have trodden the 
path of exile, who are living on ipuMic 
charity, which, though it show itself full 
of brotherhood and affection, is yet so op- 
pressive to those supremely industrious 
hands, which had never known the grievous 
burden of alms. Let us forget even those 
last of our cities to be menaced, the fairest, 
the proudest, the most beloved of our 
cities, which constitute the very face of 
our country and which only a miracle could 
now save. Let us forget, in a word, the 
greatest calamity and the most crying in- 
justice of history and think to-day only 
of our approaching deliverance. It is not 

112 



Belgium's Flag Day 

too early to hail It. It is already in all 
our thoughts, as it is in all our hearts. It 
is already in the air which we breathe, in 
all the eyes that smile at us, in all the voices 
that welcome us, in all the hands out- 
stretched to us, waving the laurels which 
they hold; for what is bringing us deliver- 
ance is the wonder, the admiration of the 
whole world! 

2 

To-morrow we shall go back to our 
homes. We shall not mourn though we 
find them in ruins. They will rise again 
more beautiful than of old from the ashes 
and the shards. We shall know days of 
heroic poverty; but we have learnt that 
poverty is powerless to sadden souls up- 
held by a great love and nourished by a 
noble ideal. We shall return with heads 
erect, regenerated in a regenerated Europe, 
rejuvenated by our magnlficnt misfortune, 

"3 



The Wrack of the Storm 

purified by victory and cleansed of the 
littleness that obscured the virtues which 
slumbered within us and of which we are 
not aware. We shall have lost all the 
goods that perish but as readily come 
to live again. And in their place we shall 
have acquired those riches which shall not 
again perish within our hearts. Our eyes 
were closed to many things; now they 
have opened upon wider horizons. Of 
old we dared not avert our gaze from our 
wealth, our petty comforts, our little rooted 
habits. But now our eyes have been 
wrested from the soil; now they have 
achieved the sight of heights that were 
hitherto unnoticed. We did not know our- 
selves; we used not to love one another 
sufficiently; but we have learnt to know 
ourselves In the amazement of glory and 
to love one another in the grievous ardour 
of the most stupendous sacrifice that any 
people has ever accomplished. We were 

114 



Belgium's Flag Day 

on the point of forgetting the heroic vir- 
tues, the unfettered thoughts, the eternal 
ideas that lead humanity. To-day, not 
only do we know that they exist: we have 
taught the world that they are always tri- 
umphant, that nothing is lost while faith 
is left, while honour is Intact, while love 
continues, while the soul does not sur- 
render and that the most monstrous of 
powers will never prevail agamst those 
ideal forces which are the happiness and 
the glory of man and the sole reason for 
his existence. 



115 



ON THE DEATH OF 
A LITTLE SOLDIER 



X 

ON THE DEATH OF A LITTLE SOLDIER 

I 

WHEN I speak of this little soldier 
who fell a few days ago, up there 
in the Vosges, it is not that I may mourn 
him publicly. It behoves us in these days 
to mourn our dead in secret. Personal sor- 
rows no longer count; and we must learn 
how to suppress them in the presence of 
that greater sorrow which extends over all 
the world, the particular sorrow of the 
mothers who are setting us an example of 
the most heroic silence that human suffer- 
ing has been taught to observe since suf- 
fering first visited womankind. For the 
admirable silence of the mothers is one 
of the great and striking lessons of this 
war. Amid that tragic and sublime silence 
no regret dare make itself heard. 

119 



The Wrack of the Storm 

But, though my grief remains dumb, my 
admiration can still raise its voice; and in 
speaking of this young soldier, who had 
not reached man's estate and who died as 
the bravest of men, I speak of all his 
brothers-in-arms and hail thousands like 
him in his name, which name becomes a 
great and glorious symbol ; for at this time, 
when a prodigious wave of unselfishness 
and courage, surging up from the very 
depths of the human race, uplifts the men 
who are fighting and giving their lives for 
its future, they all resemble one another in 
the same perfection. 



My friend Raymond Bon was a sergeant 
in the 27th battalion of the Chasseurs Al- 
pins. He left for the front in August, 
1 9 14, with the other recruits of the 19 15 
class, which means that he was hardly 
twenty years of age ; and he won his stripes 

120 



On the Death of a Soldier 

on the battlefield, after being twice named 
in dispatches. The second time was on re- 
turning from a murderous assault at 
Thann, in Upper Alsace, in which he had 
greatly distinguished himself. I quote the 
exact words : 



"Corporal Bon is mentioned in the or- 
ders of the battalion for his gallantry 
under fire and his indifference to danger. 
When the leader of his section was killed, 
Bon took command, rushed to the front 
and, shouting to his men to follow him, 
gave proofs of the greatest initiative and 
courage. He was the first in the enemy's 
trenches with his section.'* 

That day he was promoted to sergeant 
and complimented by the general in front 
of his battalion in the following terms: 

"This is the second time, my friend, that 

121 



The Wrack of the Storm 

I am told what you have done; next time 
you shall be told what I have done." 

To-day men tell of his death, but also 
of the undying glory which death alone 
confers. 

"At Hartmannsviller," writes one of 
Bon's comrades, "according to his cap- 
tain's story, our friend's company was held 
in reserve, waiting to support the attack 
delivered by a regiment of infantry. The 
order came to support and reinforce the 
attack. The company at once leapt from 
the trenches, with the captain and Bon at 
its head. There was a salvo of artillery; 
and the bursting of a great shell caught 
Raymond almost full in the body, smash- 
ing his right leg and his chest. The cap- 
tain was hit in the right hand. Notwith- 
standing his horrible wounds, Bon did not 
lose consciousness ; he was able to stammer 
out a few words and to press the hand 

122 



On the Death of a Soldier 

which the captain gave him. In less than 
two minutes all was over." 

And the captain adds : 
"Always ready to sacrifice himself; a 
brave among the brave." 

These are modest and yet glorious de- 
tails : modest because they are so very com- 
mon, because they are constantly being 
repeated in their noble monotony and 
springing up from every side, numberless 
as the essential actions of our daily life; 
and glorious because before this war they 
seemed so rare and almost legendary and 
incomprehensible. 

3 

Raymond Bon was a child of the south, 
of that Provence which, day after day, is 
shedding torrents of its blood to wipe out 
slanders which we can no longer remem- 
ber without turning pale with anger and 

123 



The Wrack of the Storm 

indignation. He was born at Avignon, the 
old city of the Popes and the cicadas, 
where men have louder accents and lighter 
hearts than elsewhere. He was a little 
boxing-master, who earned a livelihood at 
Nice for himself and his destitute parents 
by giving lessons in the noble art of self- 
defence with the good, ever-ready weapons 
which nature has bestowed upon us. He 
boasted no other education than that which 
a lad picks up at the primary school; but, 
almost illiterate as he was, he possessed all 
the refinement, the innate culture, the un- 
conscious delicacy and tact, the kindliness 
of speech and feeling and the beautiful 
heart of that comely race whose foremost 
sons seem to be purified and spiritualized 
from their first childish steps by the most 
radiant sunshine in the world. One would 
say that they were directly related to those 
exquisite ephebes of ancient Greece who 
sprang into existence ready to understand 

124 



On the Death of a Soldier 

all things and to experience life's purest 
emotions before they themselves had lived. 
My reason for insisting upon the point is 
that, In this respect above all, he repre- 
sented thousands and thousands of young 
men from that wonderful region where all 
the best and most lovable qualities of man- 
kind lie hidden all around beneath the In- 
different surface of everyday existence. 
only awaiting a favourable occasion to blos- 
som Into astonishing flowers of grace and 
generosity and heroism. 

4 
When I heard that he had gone to the 
front, I felt a melancholy certainty that I 
should never set eyes on him again. He 
was of those whose fate there is no mis- 
taking. He was one of those predestined 
heroes whose courage marks them out be- 
forehand for death and laurels. I but too 
well knew his eagerness, his unbounded sin- 

125 



The Wrack of the Storm 

cerity and single-mlndedness and his great 
heart: that admirable heart devoid of all 
caution or ulterior motive or calculation, 
that heart turned, at all times and with all 
its might, purely towards honour and duty. 
He was bound to be in the trenches and in 
the bayonet-charge the same man that I 
had so often seen in the ring, taking risks 
from the start, taking them wholesale, un- 
remittingly, blindly and cheerfully and al- 
was ready with his pleasant smile, like 
that of a shy child, at any time to face 
v/hatever giant might have challenged him. 
I remember that one day in the year 19 14, 
he was training Georges Carpentier, who 
was to meet some negro heavy-weight or 
other. The disproportion in the strength 
of the two men struck my friends and me 
as rather alarming ; and we took the cham- 
pion of the world aside and begged him not 
to hit too hard and to spare our little in- 
structor as much as he could. That good 

126 



On the Death of a Soldier 

fellow Carpentler, who is full of chival- 
rous gentleness, promised to do what we 
asked; but after the first round he came 
back to us and said: 

"I can't let him off just as lightly as I 
should like. The little chap Is too plucky 
and too sensitive; and I have to hit out 
In earnest. Besides, he overheard you 
and what he says Is, *Never mind what 
the gentlemen say; they are much too 
considerate and are always afraid of my 
getting smashed up. There's no fear of 
that. You go for me hard, else we sha'n't 
be doing good work.' " 

5 
"Good work." That is evidently what 

he did down at the front and what all of 
them there are doing. It is indeed fine 
work, the most glorious that a man can 
perform, to die like that for a cause 
whose triumph he will not behold, for bene- 
fits which he does not reap and which will 

127 



The Wrack of the Storm 

accrue solely to his fellow-men whom he 
will never see again. For, apart from 
those benefits, like so many other men, like 
almost all the others, he had nothing to 
gain and nothing to lose by this war. All 
that he possessed in the world was the 
strength of his two arms ; and that strength 
finds a country everywhere. 

But we are no longer concerned with the 
personal and immediate interests that guide 
nearly all the actions of everyday life. A 
loftier ideal has visited men's minds and 
occupies them wholly; and the least pre- 
pared, the humblest, the minds that seemed 
to understand hardly anything of the 
existence that came before the tremendous 
trial, now feel it and live it as thoroughly 
and with the same infinite ampleness as do 
those minds which thought themselves 
alone capable of grasping it, of considering 
it from above or contemplating it from 
every side. Never did a sheer Ideal sink 

128 



On the Death of a Soldier 

so deeply into so many hearts or abide there 
for so long without wavering or faltering. 
And therefore, beyond a doubt, somewhere 
on high, in the heart of tht unknown 
powers that rule us, there is being piled 
up at this moment the most wonderful 
treasure of immaterial forces that man has 
ever possessed, one upon which he will 
draw until the end of time; for in that 
superhuman treasure-house nothing is lost 
and we are still living day by day on the 
virtues stored in it long centuries ago by 
the heroes of Greece and Rome, by the 
saints and martyrs of the primitive Church 
and by the flower of mediaeval chivalry. 



129 



THE HOUR OF DESTINY 



THE HOUR OF DESTINY 
I 

WE ARE already free to speak of 
this war as if it were ended and 
of victory as if it were assured. In princi- 
ple, in the region of moral certainties, Ger- 
many has been beaten since the battle of 
the Marne; and reality, which is always 
slower, because it goes burdened beneath 
the weight of matter, must needs come 
obediently to join the ranks of those cert- 
ainties. The last agony may be prolonged 
for weeks and months, for the animal is 
endowed with the stubborn and almost in- 
extinguishable vitality of the beasts of 
prey; but it is wounded to the death; 
and we have only to wait patiently, wea- 
pon in hand, for the final convulsions that 
announce the end. The h'lstoric event, the 

133 



The Wrack of the Storm 

greatest beyond doubt since man possessed 
a history, is therefore accomplished; and, 
strange to say, it seems as though it had 
been accomplished in spite of history, 
against Its laws and contrary to Its wishes. 
It is rash, I know, to speak of such things ; 
and it behoves us to be very cautious in 
these speculations which pass the scope of 
human understanding; but, when we con- 
sider what the annals of this earth of ours 
have taught us, it seemed written in the 
book of the world's destinies that Germany 
was bound to win. It was not only, as we 
are too ready at the first glance to believe, 
the megalomania of an autocrat drunk 
with vanity, the gross vanity of some brain- 
less buffoon; it was not the warlike Im- 
pulses, the blind infatuation and egoism of 
a feudal caste; It was not even the impa- 
tient and deliberately fanned envy and 
covetousness of a too prolific race close- 
cramped on a dreary and ungrateful soil: 

134 



The Hour of Destiny 

It was none of these that let loose the hate- 
ful war. All these causes, adventitious or 
fortuitous as they were, only settled the 
hour of the decision; but the decision Itself 
was taken and written, probably ages ago, 
in other spheres which cannot be reached 
by the conscious will of man, spheres in 
which dark and mighty laws hold sway 
over illimitable time and space. The 
whole line, the whole huge curve of history 
showed to the mind of whosoever tried 
to read its sacred and fearful hieroglyphics 
that the day of a new, a formidable and 
Inexorable event was at hand. 

The theories built up on this point in 
the last sixty years by the German pro- 
fessors, notably by Giesbrecht, the his- 
torian of the Ottos and the Hohenstaufens, 
and Treitschke, the historian of the Hohen- 
zoUerns, do not necessarily carry conviction 
but are at least Impressive; and the work 
of these two writers, which we do not know 

135 



The Wrack of the Storm 

as well as we should, and of Treitschke 
in particular possessed In Germany an In- 
fluence that sank deep Into every mind, 
far exceeding that of Nietzsche, which we 
looked upon as preponderant. 

But let us Ignore for the moment all that 
belongs to a remote past, the study of 
which would call for more space than we 
have at our disposal. Let us not question 
the empire of the Ottos, the Hohenstau- 
fens or the Hapsburgs, In which Germany, 
at least as a nation and a race, played but 
a secondary part and was still unconscious 
of her existence. Let us rather see what 
Is happening nearer to us and, so to speak, 
before our very eyes. 



A hundred years ago, under Napoleon, 
France enjoyed her spell of hegemony, 
which she was not able to prolong because 
this hegemony was more the work of a 

136 



The Hour of Destiny 

prodigious but accidental genius than the 
fruit of a real and intrinsic power. Next 
came the turn of England, who to-day pos- 
sesses the greatest empire that the world 
has seen since the days of ancient Rome, 
that is to say, more than a fifth part of 
the habitable globe. But this vast em- 
pire rests no more than did Napoleon's 
upon an incontestible force, inasmuch as 
up to this day it was defended only by an 
army less numerous and less well-equipped 
than that of many a smaller nation, thus 
almost inevitably inviting vv^ar, as Pro- 
fessor Cramb pointed out a year or two ago 
in his prophetic book, Germany and Eng- 
land, which has only recently aroused the 
interest which it deserves. 

It seemed, therefore, as if between these 
two Powers, which were more illusory than 
real, pending the advent of Russia, whose 
hour had not yet struck; in this gap in 
history, between a nation on the verge of 

137 



The Wrack of the Storm 

its decline, or at least seemingly incapable 
of defending itself, and a nation that was 
still too young and incapable of attack, fate 
offered a magnificent place to whoso cared 
to take it. This is what Germany felt, at 
first instinctively, urged by all the ill-de- 
fined forces that impel mankind, and sub- 
sequently, in these latter years, with a 
consciousness that became ever clearer and 
more persistent. She grasped the fact 
that her turn had come to reign over the 
earth, that she must take her chance and 
seize the opportunity that comes but once. 
She prepared to answer the call of fate 
and, supported by the mysterious aid which 
it lends to those whom it summons, she did 
answer, we must admit, in an astonishing 
and most formidable manner. 

She was within a hair's breadth of suc- 
ceeding. A little les5 orolonsed and less 
gallant resistance on the part of Belgium, 
a suspicious movement from Italy, a false 

138 



The Hour of Destiny 

step made upon the banks of the Marne; 
and we can picture Paris falling; France 
overrun and fighting heroically to her last 
gasp; Russia, not crushed, but weary of 
seeking victory and making terms for good 
or 111 with a conqueror Impotent to harm 
her; the neutral nations more or less re- 
luctantly siding with the strongest; Eng- 
land Isolated, giving up her colonies to 
staunch the wounds of her Invaded Isle; 
the fasces of justice broken asunder by a 
separate peace here, a separate peace there, 
each equally humiliating; and Germany, 
monstrous, ferocious. Implacable, finally 
towering alone over the ruins of Europe. 

3 
Now it seems that we have turned aside 
the Inflexible decree. It seems that we 
have averted the fate that was about to 
be accomplished. It was bearing down 
upon us with the weight of the ages, with 

139 



The Wrack of the Storm 

all the weight of all the vague but irresist- 
ible aspirations of the past and, perhaps, 
the future. Thanks to the greatest effort 
which mankind has ever opposed to the 
unknown gods that rule it, we are entitled 
to believe that the decree has broken down 
and that we have driven it into the evil 
cave where never human force before had 
compelled it to hide its defeat. 

I say, "It seems;" I say, "We are en- 
titled to believe." The fact is that the or- 
deal is not yet past. Even on the day when 
the war is ended and when victory is in our 
hands, destiny will not yet be conquered. 
It has happened — seldom, it is true, but 
still it has happened twice or thrice — that a 
nation has compelled the course of fate to 
turn aside or to fall back. The nation con- 
gratulated herself, even as we believe that 
we have the right to do. But events were 
not slow in proving that she had congratu- 
lated herself too soon. Fatality, that is to 

140 



The Hour of Destiny 

say, the enormous mass of causes and ef- 
fects of which we have no understanding, 
was not overcome; It was only delayed, 
it awaited its revenge and its day, or 
at least what we call its day, which may 
extend over a hundred years and more 
where nations are concerned, for fatality 
does not reckon in the manner of men, but 
after the fashion of the great movements 
of nature. It is important at this time to 
know whether we shall be able to escape 
that revenge and that day. If m^en and na- 
tions were swayed only by reason, if, after 
being so often the absolute masters of their 
happiness and their future, they had not 
so often destroyed that which they had 
just achieved, then we might say — and in- 
deed ought to say — that our escape de- 
pends only upon ourselves. In point of 
fact, three-quarters of the risk are run 
and the fourth is in our power; we have 
only to keep it so. Almost all the chances 

141 



The Wrack of the Storm 

of the fight are on our side at last; and, 
when the war is over, there will be no- 
thing but our wisdom and our will con- 
fronting a destiny which from that time 
onward will be powerless to take its course, 
unless it first succeed in blinding and per- 
verting them. 

In this hour all that lies hidden under 
that mysterious word will be waiting on 
our decision, waiting to know if victory is 
with us or with it. It is after we have 
won that we must really vanquish; it is in 
the hour of peace that the actual war will 
begin against an invisible foe, a hundred 
times as dangerous as the one of whom we 
have seen too much. If at that hour we 
do not profit by all our advantages; if we 
do not destroy, root and branch, the mili- 
tary power of an enemy who is in secret 
alliance with the evil Influences of the 
earth; if we do not here and now, by an 
irrevocable compact, forearm ourselves 

142 



The Hour of Destiny 

against our sense of pity and generosity, 
our weakness, our imprudence, our future 
rivalries and discords; if v/e leave a single 
outlet to the beast at bay; if, through our 
negligence, we give it a single hope, a sin- 
gle opportunity of coming to the surface 
and taking breath, then the vigilant fatal- 
ity which has but one fixed idea will resume 
Its progress and pursue its way, dragging 
history with it and laughing over its 
shoulder at man once more tricked and 
discomfited. Everything that we have done 
and suffered, the ruins, the sacrifices, the 
nameless tortures and the numberless dead, 
will have served no purpose and will be 
lost beyond redemption. Everything will 
not have to be done over again, for nothing 
is ever done over again and fortunate op- 
portunities do not occur twice; but every- 
thing except our woes and all their con- 
sequences will be as though it had never 
been. 

143 



The Wrack of the Storm 

4 
It will therefore be a matter of holding 
our own agahist the enemy whom we do 
not see and mastering him until the turn 
or chance of the accursed race is past. 
How long will that be? We cannot 
tell; but, in the swift-moving history of 
to-day, it seems probable that the waiting 
and the struggle will be much shorter than 
they would have been in former times. Is 
it possible that fatality — by which I mean 
what perhaps for a moment was the un- 
acknowledged desire of the planet — shall 
not regain the upper hand? At the stage 
which man has reached, I hope and believe 
so. He had never conquered it before; 
but also he had not yet risen to the height 
which he has now attained. There is no 
reason why that which has never happened 
should not take place one day; and every- 
thing seems to tell us that man is approach- 
ing the day whereon, seizing the most 

144 



The Hour of Destiny 

glorious opportunity that has ever present- 
ed Itself since he acquired a consciousness, 
he will at last learn that he is able, when he 
pleases, to control his whole fate In this 
world. 



145 



IN ITALY 



XII 

IN ITALY 
I 

A FEW days before Italy formed her 
great resolve, the following lines ap- 
peared in one of the leading Pangermanic 
organs of the peoples beyond the Rhine, 
the Kreuzzeitung: 

"We have already observed that it will 
not do to be too optimistic as to Italy's de- 
cision; in point of fact, the situation is very 
serious. If none but moderate considera- 
tions had ruled Italy's intentions, there is 
little doubt as to which path she would 
choose ; but we know the height which the 
wave of Germanophobia has attained in 
that country, a significant mark of the 
popular sentiment being the declaration of 
the Italian Socialists upon the reasons of 

149 



The Wrack of the Storm 

tneir inability to oppose the war. An equal 
source of danger Is the fact that the gov- 
ernment feels that It no longer controls 
the current of public opinion." 

The whole drama of Italian intervention 
is summed up in these lines, which explain 
it better than would the longest and most 
learned commentaries. 

The Italian government, restrained by 
a politic wisdom and prudence, excessive, 
perhaps, but very excusable, did not wish 
for war. To the utmost limits of patience, 
until Its dignity and Its sense of security 
could bear no more, It did all that could 
be done to spare Its people the greatest 
calamity that can befall a land. It held 
out until it was literally submerged and car- 
ried away by the flood of Germanophobia 
of which the passage which I have quoted 
speaks. I witnessed the rising of this 
flood. When I arrived in Milan, at the 

ISO 



In Italy 

end of November, 19 14, to speak a few 
sentences at a charity-fete organized for the 
benefit of the Belgian refugees, the hatred 
of Germany was already storing itself up 
in men's hearts, but had not as yet come to 
the surface. Here and there it did break 
out, but it was still fearful, circumspect and 
hesitating. One felt it brewing, seething 
in the depths of men's souls, but it seemed 
as yet to be feeling its way, to be reckoning 
itself up, to be painfully attaining self-con- 
sciousness. When I returned to Italy in 
March, 19 15, I was amazed to behold the 
unhoped-for height to which the invading 
flood had so swiftly risen. That pious 
hatred, that necessary hatred, which in this 
case is merely a magnificent passion for 
justice and humanity, had swept over every- 
thing. It had come out into the full sun- 
light; it thrilled and quivered at the 
least appeal, proud and happy to assert 
itself, to manifest itself with the beautiful 
i 151 



The Wrack of the Storm 

tumultuous ostentation of the South; and it 
was the "neutrals" that now hid themselves 
after the manner of unspeakable insects. 
That species had all but disappeared, anni- 
hilated by the storm that was gathering on 
every hand. The Germans themselves had 
gone to earth, no one knew where; and 
from that moment it was certain that war 
was imminent and inevitable. 

In the space of three months a stupen- 
dous work had been accomplished. It is 
impossible for the moment to weigh and 
determine the part of each of those who 
performed it. But we can even now say 
that in Italy, which is governed preemi- 
nently by public opinion and which, more 
than any other nation, has in its blood the 
traditions and the habits of the forum and 
the ancient republics, it is above all the 
spoken word that changes men's hearts 
and urges them to action. 



152 



In Italy 

2 

From this point of view, the admirable 
campaign of agitation and propaganda un- 
dertaken by M. Jules Destree, author 
of En Italie, was of afn importance and pos- 
sessed consequences which are beyond com- 
parison with anything else accomplished 
and which are difficult to realize by those 
who were not present at one or other of 
the meetings at which, for more than six 
months, Indefatigably, travelling from 
town to town, from the smallest to the 
most populous, he uttered the distressful 
complaint of martyred Belgium, unveiling 
the lies, the felonies, the monstrosities and 
the acts of devastation perpetrated by the 
barbarian horde and making heard, with 
sovran eloquence, the august voice of out- 
raged justice and of baffled right. 

I heard him more than once and was 
able to judge for myself of the magical 
effect — the term is by no means too strong 

153 



The Wrack of the Storm 

—which he produced on the Italian crowd. 
It was a magnificent spectacle, which I shall 
never forget. I then perceived for the 
first time in my life the mysterious, in- 
cantatory, supernatural powers of great 
eloquence. 

He would come forward wearing a lan- 
guid, dejected and overburdened air. The 
crowd, like all crowds awaiting their mas- 
ter, sat thronged at his feet, silently hum- 
ming, undecided, unshaped, not yet know- 
ing what it wanted or intended. He would 
begin; his voice was low, leisurely, almost 
hesitating; he seemed to be painfully 
searching for his ideas and expressions, but 
in reality he was feeling for the sensitive 
and magnetic points of the huge and un- 
known being whose soul he wished to reach. 
At the outset it was evident that he did not 
know exactly what he was going to say. He 
swept his words across the assembly as 
though they had been antennae. They 

154 



In Italy 

came back to him charged with sympathy 
and strength and precise information. 
Then his delivery became more rapid, his 
body drew itself erect, his stature and his 
very size increased. His voice grew fuller ; 
it became tremendous, seductive or sarcas- 
tic, overwhelming like a hurricane all the 
ideas of his audience, beating against the 
walls of the largest buildings, flowing, 
through the doors and windows, out into 
the surging streets, there to kindle the ar- 
dour and hatred which already thrilled the 
hall. His face — tawny, brutal, ravaged, 
furrowed with shade and slashed with light, 
powerful and magnificent in its ugliness — 
became the very mask, the visible symbol 
of the furious and generous passions of the 
crowd. At moments such as this, he truly 
merited the name which I heard those 
about me murmuring, the name which the 
Italians gave him in that kind of helpless 
fear and delight which men feel in the 

155 



The Wrack of the Storm 

presence of an Irresistible force: he was 
''the Terrible Orator." 

But all this power, which seemed so 
blindly released, was in reality extremely 
circumspect, extremely subtle and marvel- 
lously disciplined. The handling of those 
shy though excited crowds called for the 
utmost prudence, as a certain French 
speaker, whom I will not name, but who 
wished to make a like attempt, learnt to 
his cost. The Italian is generous, court- 
eous, hospitable, expansive and enthusiastic, 
but also proud and susceptible. He does 
not readily allow another to dictate his 
conduct, to reproach him with his short- 
comings or to offer him advice. He is 
conscious of his own worth; he knows that 
he is the eldest son of our civilization and 
that no one has the right to patronize him. 
It is necessary, therefore, beneath the ap- 
pearance of the most fiery and unbridled 
eloquence, to observe perfect self-mastery, 

is6 



In Italy 

combined with infinite tact and discretion. 
It is often essential to divine instantane- 
ously the temper of the crowd, to bow be- 
^ fore the most varied and unexpected cir- 
cumstances and to profit by them. I 
remember, among others, a singularly 
prickly meeting at Naples. The Neapoli- 
tans are hardly warlike people; but they 
none the less felt on this occasion that they 
must not appear indifferent to the generous 
movement which was thrilling the rest of 
Italy. At the last moment, we were 
warned that we might speak of Belgium 
and her misfortunes, but that any too 
pointed allusion to the war, any too violent 
attack upon the Teutonic bandits would 
arouse protests which might injure our 
cause. I, being no orator, had only my 
poor written speech, which, as I could not 
alter it, became dangerous. It was neces- 
sary to prepare the ground. Destree 
mounted the platform and, in a masterly 

157 



The Wrack of the Storm 

improvisation, began by establishing a long, 
patient and scholarly parallel between 
Flemish and Italian art, between the great 
painters of Florence and Venice and those 
of Flanders and Brabant; and thence, by 
imperceptible degrees, he shifted his 
ground to the present distress in Belgium, 
to the atrocities and infamies committed by 
her oppressors, to the whole story, to the 
whole series of injustices, to the whole dan- 
ger of this nameless war. He was ap- 
plauded; the barriers were broken down. 
Anything added to what he had said was 
superfluous ; but everything was permissible. 

3 

For the rest, it must be admitted that 
a wonderful Impulse of pity and admira- 
tion for Belgium sustained the orator and 
lent his every word a range and a potency 
which It could not otherwise have pos- 
sessed. This unanimous and spontaneous 

158 



In Italy 

sympathy assumed at times the most touch- 
ing and unexpected forms. All difficulties 
were smoothed away before us as by magic; 
the sternest prohibitions were ingeniously 
evaded or benevolently removed. From 
the towns which we were due to visit the 
hotel-keepers telegraphed to us, begging 
as a favour permission to give us lodg- 
ing; and, when the time came to set- 
tle our account, it was impossible to 
get them to accept the slightest remu- 
neration; and the whole staff, from the 
majestic porter to the humblest boot- 
boy, heroically refused to be tipped. If 
we entered a restaurant and were recog- 
nized, the customers would rise, take coun- 
sel together and order a bottle of some 
famous wine ; then one among them would 
come forward, requesting, gracefully and 
respectfully, that we would do them the 
honour of drinking with them to the deli- 
verance of our martyred motherland. At 

159 



The Wrack of the Storm 

the memory of what that unhappy country 
had suffered for the salvation of the world, 
a sort of discreet and affecting fervour was 
visible in the looks of all; it may be said 
that nowhere was the heroic sacrifice of Bel- 
gium more nobly and more affectionately 
admired and understood; and it will be 
recognized one day, when time has done 
its work, that, although other causes in- 
duced Italy to take upon her shoulders the 
terrible burden of what was not an inevi- 
table war, the only causes that really, in 
the depths of her soul, liberated her re- 
solve were the admiration, the indignation 
and the heroic pity inspired by the specta- 
cle, incessantly renewed, of our unmerited 
afflictions. You will not find in history a 
nobler sacrifice nor one made for a nobler 
cause. 



i6o 



ON REREADING THUCYDIDES 



XIII 

ON REREADING THUCYDIDES 
I 

AT MOMENTS above all when his- 
tory Is In the making, In these times 
when great and as yet incomplete pages are 
being traced, pages by the side of which 
all that had already been written will pale, 
it Is a good and salutary thing to turn to 
the past in search of Instruction, warning 
and encouragement. In this respect, the 
unwearying and implacable war which 
Athens kept up against Sparta for twenty- 
seven years, with the hegemony of Greece 
for a stake, presents more than one ana- 
logy with that which we ourselves are 
waging and teaches lessons that should 
make us reflect. The counsels which it 
gives us are all the more precious, all the 

more striking or profound inasmuch as the 

163 



The Wrack of the Storm 

war Is narrated to us by a man who re- 
mains, with Tacitus, despite the striving of 
the centuries, the progress of life and all 
the opportunities of doing better, the great- 
est historian that the earth has ever known. 
Thucydldes Is in fact the supreme historian, 
at the same time swift and detailed, scrupu- 
lously sifting his evidence but giving free 
play to intuition, setting forth none but 
incontestable facts, yet divining the most 
secret intentions and embracing at a glance 
all the present and future political conse- 
quences of the events which he relates. He 
is withal one of the most perfect writers, 
one of the most admirable artists In the 
literature of mankind ; and from this point 
of view. In an entirely different and almost 
antagonistic world, he has not an equal 
save Tacitus. But Tacitus Is before every- 
thing a wonderful tragic poet, a painter 
of foul abysses, of fire and blood, who can 
lay bare the souls of monsters and their 

164 



On Rereading Thucydides 

crimes, whereas Thucydides is above all a 
great political moralist, a statesman en- 
dowed with extraordinary perspicacity, a 
painter of the open air and of a free state, 
who portrays the minds of those sane, in- 
genious, subtle, generous and marvellously 
intelligent men who peopled ancient Greece. 
The one piles on the gloom with a lavish 
hand, gathers dark shadows which he 
pierces at each sentence with lightning- 
flashes, but remains sombre and oppressed 
on the very summits, whereas the other con- 
denses nothing but light, groups together 
judgments that are so many radiant sheaves 
and remains luminous and breathes freely 
In the very depths. The first is passion- 
ate, violent, fierce, indignant, bitter, sin- 
cerely but pitilessly unjust and all made up 
of magnificent animosities; the second is al- 
ways even, always at the same high level, 
which is that which the noblest endeavour 
of human reason can attain. He has no 

i6s 



The Wrack of the Storm 

passion but a passion for the public weal, 
for justice, glory and intelligence. It is 
as though all his work were spread out in 
the blue sky; and even his famous picture 
of the plague of Athens seems covered with 
sunshine. 

2 

But there Is no need to follow up this 
parallel, which is not my object. I will 
not dwell any longer — though perhaps I 
may return to them one day — upon the les- 
sons which we might derive from that 
Peloponnesian War, in which the position 
of Athens towards Lacedaemon provides 
more than one point of comparison with 
that of France towards Germany. True, 
we do not there see, as in our own case, 
civilized nations fighting a morally barbar- 
ian people : it was a contest between Greeks 
and Greeks, displaying however in the same 
physical race two different and incompati- 
ble spirits. Athens stood for human life 

i66 



On Rereading Thucydides 

in Its happiest development, gracious, 
cheerful and peaceful. She took no serious 
Interest except in the happiness, the impon- 
derous riches, the innocent and perfect 
beauties, the sweet leisures, the glories and 
the arts of peace. When she went to war, 
it was as though in play, with the smile still 
on her face, looking upon it as a more 
violent pleasure than the rest, or as a duty 
joyfully accepted. She bound herself down 
to no discipline, she was never ready, she 
Improvised everything at the last moment, 
having, as Pericles said, "with habits not 
of labour but of ease and courage not of 
art but of nature, the double advantage 
of escaping the experience of hardship in 
anticipation and of facing them In the hour 
of need as fearlessly as those who are never 
free from them."^ 

^This and the later passage from Pericles' funeral 
oration I have quoted from the late Richard Craw- 
ley's admirable translation of Thucydides' Pelopon- 

nesian War, now published in the Temple Classics 

A. T. de M. 

167 



The Wrack of the Storm 

For Sparta, on the other hand, life was 
nothing but endless work, an incessant 
strain, having no other objective than war. 
She was gloomy, austere, strict, morose, al- 
most ascetic, an enemy to everything that 
excuses man's presence on this earth, a na- 
tion of spoilers, looters, incendiaries and 
devastators, a nest of wasps beside a swarm 
of bees, a perpetual menace and danger to 
everything around her, as hard upon her- 
self as upon others and boasting an ideal 
which may appear lofty, if it can be man's 
ideal to be unhappy and the contented slave 
of unrelenting discipline. On the other 
hand, she differed entirely from those whom 
we are now fighting in that she was gener- 
ally honest, loyal and upright and showed a 
certain respect for the gods and their tem- 
ples, for treaties and for International law. 
It is none the less true that, if she had from 
the beginning reigned alone or without en- 
countering a long resistance, Hellas would 

i68 



On Rereading Thucydides 

never have been the Hellas that we knovr. 
She would have left In history but a precar- 
ious trace of useless warlike virtues and of 
minor combats without glory; and mankind 
would not have possessed that centre of 
light towards which It turns to this day. 

3 
What was to be the Issue of this war? 
Here begins the lesson which It v/ere well 
to study thoroughly. It would seem In- 
deed as If, with the first encounters In that 
conflict, as In our own, the Inexplicable will 
that governs nations was favourable to the 
less civilized; and In fact Lacedaemon 
gained the upper hand, at least temporarily 
and sufficiently to abuse her victory to such 
a degree that she soon lost Its fruits. But 
Athens held the evil will in check for 
seven-and-twenty years; for twenty-seven 
summers and twenty-seven winters, to use 

Thucydides' reckoning, she proved to us 

169 



The Wrack of the Storm 

that It is possible, in defiance of probability, 
to fight against what seems written in the 
book of heaven and hell. Nay more, at 
a time when Sparta, whose sole industry, 
whose sole training, whose only reason for 
existence and whose only ideal was war, 
was hugging the thought of crushing in a 
few weeks, under the weight of her for- 
midable hoplites, a frivolous, careless and 
ill-organized city, Athens, notwithstanding 
the treacherous blow which fate dealt her 
by sending a plague that carried off a third 
of her civil population and a quarter of her 
army, Athens for seventeen years definitely 
held victory in her grasp. 

During this period, she more than once 
had Lacedaemon at her mercy and did not 
begin to descend the stony path of ruin and 
defeat until after the disastrous expedition 
to Sicily, in which, carried away by her 
rhetoricians and bitten with inconceivable 
folly, she hurled all her fleet, all her sold- 

170 



On Rereading Thucydides 

lers and all her wealth into a remote, un- 
profitable, unknown and desperate adven- 
ture. She resisted the decline of her for- 
tunes for yet another ten years, heaping up 
her sins against wisdom and simple com- 
mon sense and with her own hands drawing 
tighter the knot that was to strangle her, 
as though to show us that destiny is for 
the most part but our own madness and 
that what we call unavoidable fatality has 
its root only in mistakes that might easily 
be avoided. 

4 
To point this moral was again not my 
real object. In these days when we have 
so many sorrows to assuage and so many 
deaths to honour, I wished merely to re- 
call a page written over two thousand years 
ago, to the glory of the Athenian heroes 
who fell for their country in the first bat- 
tles of that war. According to the cus- 
tom of the Greeks, the bones of the dead 

171 



The Wrack of the Storm 

that had been burnt on the battlefield were 
solemnly brought back to Athens at the end 
of the year; and the people chose the great- 
est speaker in the city to deliver the funeral 
oration. This honour fell to Pericles, son 
of Xanthippus, the Pericles of the golden 
age of human beauty. After pronouncing 
a well-merited and magnificent eulogium on 
the Athenian nation and institutions, he 
concluded with the following words : 

"Indeed, if I have dwelt at some length 
upon the character of our country, it has 
been to show that our stake in the struggle 
is not the same as theirs who have no such 
blessing to lose and also that the panegyric 
of the men over whom I am now speaking 
might be by definite proofs established. 
That panegyric is now in a great measure 
complete; for the Athens that I have cele- 
brated is only what the heroism of these 
and their like have made her, men whose 

172 



On Rereading Thucydides 

fame, unlike that of most Hellenes, will 
be found to be only commensurate with 
their deserts. And, if a test of worth be 
wanted, it is to be found in their closing 
scene; and this not only in the cases in 
which it set the final seal upon their merit, 
but also in those in which it gave the first 
intimation of their having any. For there 
is justice in the claim that steadfastness in 
his country's battles should be as a cloak 
to cover a man's other imperfections, since 
the good action has blotted out the bad and 
his merit as a citizen more than outweighed 
his demerits as an individual. But none 
of these allowed either wealth with its pro- 
spect of future enjoyment to unnerve his 
spirit, or poverty with its hope of a day 
of freedom and riches to tempt him to 
shrink from danger. No, holding that 
vengeance upon their enemies was more to 
be desired than any personal blessings and 
reckoning this to be the most glorious of 

173 



The Wrack of the Storm 

hazards, they joyfully determined to accept 
the risk, to make sure of their vengeance 
and to let their wishes wait; and, while 
committing to hope the uncertainty of final 
success, in the business before them they 
thought fit to act boldly and trust in them- 
selves. Thus choosing to die resisting 
rather than to live submitting, they fled 
only from, dishonour, but met danger face 
to face and, after one brief moment, while 
at the summit of their fortune, escaped not 
from their fear but from their glory. 

*'So died these man as became Athenians. 
You, their survivors, must determine to 
have as unfaltering a resolution in the field, 
though you may pray that it may have a 
happier issue. And, not contented with 
ideas derived only from words of the ad- 
vantages which are bound up with the de- 
fence of your country, though these would 
furnish a valuable text to a speaker even 
before an audience so alive to them as the 

174 



On Rereading Thucydides 

present, you must yourselves realize the 
power of Athens and feed your eyes upon 
her from day to day, till love of her fills 
your hearts ; and then, when all her great- 
ness shall break upon you, you must reflect 
that It was by courage, sense of duty and a 
keen feeling of honour In action that men 
were enabled to win all this and that no 
personal failure In an enterprise could make 
them consent to deprive their country of 
their valour, but they laid It at her feet 
as the most glorious contribution that they 
could offer. For by this offering of their 
lives made In common by them all they 
each of them Individually received that re- 
nown which never grows old and, for a 
sepulchre, not so much that In which their 
bones have been deposited, but that noblest 
of shrines wherein their glory Is laid up to 
be eternally remembered upon every occa- 
sion on which deed or story shall call for 
its commemoration. For heroes have the 

175 



The Wrack of the Storm 

whole earth for their tomb; and in lands 
far from their own, where the column with 
its epitaph declares it, there is enshrined 
in every breast a record unwritten with no 
tablet to preserve it, except that of the 
heart. These take as your model and, 
judging happiness to be the fruit of free- 
dom and freedom of valour, never decline 
the dangers of war. For it is not the 
miserable that would most justly be un- 
sparing of their lives: these have nothing 
to hope for ; It is rather they to whom con- 
tinued life may bring reverses as yet un- 
known and to whom a fall, if it came, 
would be most tremendous in its conse- 
quences. And surely, to a man of spirit, 
the degradation of cowardice must be im- 
measurably more grievous than the unfelt 
death which strikes him in the midst of his 
strength and patriotism I 

"Comfort, therefore, not condolence, is 

what I have to offer to the parents of the 

176 



On Rereading Thucydidcs 

dead who may be here. Numberless are 
the chances to which, as they know, the life 
of man is subject; but fortunate indeed are 
they who draw for their lot a death so 
glorious as that which bias caused your 
mourning and to whom life has been so 
exactly measured as to terminate in the 
happiness in which it has been passed. Still 
I know that this is a hard saying, especially 
when those are In question of whom you 
will be constantly reminded by seeing in 
the homes of others blessings of which once 
you also boasted; for grief Is felt not so 
much for the want of what we have never 
known as for the loss of that to which we 
have been long accustomed. Yet you who 
are still of an age to beget children must 
bear up in the hope of having others in 
their stead: not only will they help you to 
forget those whom you have lost, but they 
will be to the state at once a reinforcement 
and a security ; for never can a fair or just 
policy be expected of the citizen who does 

177 



The Wrack of the Storm 

not, like his fellows, bring to the decision 
the interests and apprehensions of a father. 
While those of you who have passed your 
prime must congratulate yourselves with 
the thought that the best part of your life 
was fortunate and that the brief span that 
remains will be cheered by the fame of the 
departed. For it is only the love of hon- 
our that never grows old ; and honour it is, 
not gain, as some would have it, that re- 
joices the heart of age and helplessness. 
"And, now that you have brought to a 
close your lamentations for your relatives, 
you may depart.'' 

These words spoken twenty-three centu- 
ies ago ring In our hearts as though they 
were uttered yesterday. They celebrate 
our dead better than could any eloquence of 
ours, however poignant It might be. Let 
us bow before their paramount beauty and 
before the great people that could applaud 
and understand. 

178 



THE DEAD DO NOT DIE 



XIV 

THE DEAD DO NOT DIE 
I 

WHEN we behold the terrible loss of 
so many young lives, when we see 
so many incarnations of physical and moral 
vigour, of intellect and of glorious pro- 
mise pitilessly cut off in their first flower, we 
are on the verge of despair. Never before 
have the fairest energies and aspirations 
of men been flung recklessly and incessantly 
into an abyss whence comes no sound or 
answer. Never since it came into existence 
has humanity squandered its treasure, its 
substance and its prospects so lavishly. For 
more than twelve months, on every battle- 
field, where the bravest, the truest, the most 
ardent and self-sacrificing are necessarily 
the first to die and where the less courage- 
ous, the less generous, the weak, the ailing, 

i8i 



The Wrack of the Storm 

In a word the less desirable, alone possess 
some chance of escaping the carnage, for 
over twelve months a sort of monstrous 
inverse selection has been in operation, one 
which seems to be deliberately seeking the 
downfall of the human race. And we won- 
der uneasily what the state of the world 
will be after the great trial and what wall 
be left of it and what will be the future 
of this stunted race, shorn of all the best 
and noblest part of it. 

The problem is certainly one of the 
darkest that have ever vexed the minds of 
men. It contains a material truth before 
which we remain defenceless; and, if we 
accept it as it stands, we can discover no 
remedy for the evil that threatens us. But 
material and tangible truths are never any- 
thing but a more or less salient angle of 
greater and deeper-lying truths. And, on 
the other hand, mankind appears to be such 
a necessary and Indestructible force of na^ 

182 



The Dead Do not Die 

ture that it has always, hitherto, not only 
survived the most desperate ordeals, but 
succeeded in benefiting by them and emer- 
ging greater and stronger than before. 



We know that peace is better than war ; 
it were madness to compare the two. We 
know that, if this catacylsm let loose by an 
act of unutterable folly had not come upon 
the world, mankind would doubtless have 
reached ere long a zenith of wonderful 
achievement whose manifestations it is im- 
possible to foreshadow. We know that, if 
a third or a fourth part of the fabulous 
sums expended on extermination and de- 
struction had been devoted to works of 
peace, all the iniquities that poison the air 
we breathe would have been triumphantly 
redressed and that the social question, the 
one great question, that matter of life and 
death which justice demands that posterity 

183 



The Wrack of the Storm 

should face, would have found its definite 
solution, once and for all, in a happiness 
which now perhaps even our sons and 
grandsons will not realize. We know that 
the disappearance of two or three million 
young existences, cut down when they were 
on the point of bearing fruit, will leave in 
history a void that will not be easily filled, 
even as we know that among those dead 
were mighty intellects, treasures of genius 
which will not come back again and which 
contained inventions and discoveries that 
will now perhaps be lost to us for centuries. 
We know that we shall never grasp the 
consequences of this thrusting back of pro- 
gress and of this unprecedented devastation. 
But, granting all this, it is a good thing to 
recover our balance and stand upon our 
feet. There is no irreparable loss. Every- 
thing is transformed, nothing perishes and 
that which seems to be hurled into destruc- 
tion is not destroyed at all. Our moral 

184 



The Dead Do not Die 

world, even as our physical world, Is a vast 
but hermetically sealed sphere, whence 
naught can issue, whence naught can 
fall, to be dissolved In space. All that 
exists, all that comes Into being upon 
this earth remains there and bears fruit; 
and the most appalling wastage is but 
material or spiritual riches flung away for 
an Instant, to fall to the ground again In a 
new form. There Is no escape or leakage, 
no filtering through cracks, no missing the 
mark, not even waste or neglect. All this 
heroism poured out on every side does not 
leave our planet; and the reason why the 
courage of our fighters seems so general 
and yet so extraordinary Is that all the 
might of the dead has passed into the 
survivors. All those forces of wisdom, 
patience, honour and self-sacrifice which In- 
crease day by day and which, we ourselves, 
who are far from the field of danger, feel 
rising within us without knowing whence 

185 



The Wrack of the Storm 

they come are nothing but the souls of the 
heroes gathered and absorbed by our own 
souls. 

3 

It is well at times to contemplate in- 
visible things as though we saw them with 
our eyes. This was the aim of all the 
great religions, when they represented 
under forms appropriate to the civilization 
of their day, the latent, deep, instinctive, 
general and essential truths which are the 
guiding principles of mankind. All have 
felt and recognized that loftiest of all 
truths, the communion of the living and 
the dead, and have given it various names 
designating the same mysterious verity : the 
Christians know it as revival of merit, the 
Buddhists as reincarnation, or transmigra- 
tion of souls, and the Japanese as Shinto- 
ism, or ancestor-worship. The last are 
more fully convinced than any other nation 

i86 



The Dead Do not Die 

that the dead do not cease to live and that 
they direct all our actions, are exalted by 
our virtues and become gods. 

Lafcadio Hearn, the writer who has 
most closely studied and understood that 
wonderful ancestor-worship, says: 

'*One of the surprises of our future will 
certainly be a return to beliefs and ideas 
long ago abandoned upon the mere assump- 
tion that they contained no truth — beliefs 
still called barbarous, pagan, mediaeval, by 
those who condemn them out of traditional 
habit. Year after year the researches of 
science afford us new proof that the savage, 
the barbarian, the idolater, the monk, each 
and all have arrived, by different paths, as 
near to some point of eternal truth as any 
thinker of the nineteenth century. We are 
now learning also, that the theories of the 
astrologers and of the alchemists were but 
partially, not totally, wrong. We have 

187 



The Wrack of the Storm 

reason even to suppose that no dream of 
the invisible world has ever been dreamed, 
that no hypothesis of the unseen has ever 
been imagined — ^whlch future science will 
not prove to have contained some germ of 
reality."^ 

There are many things which might be 
added to these lines, notably all that the 
most recent of our sciences, metapsychics, 
is engaged in discovering with regard to 
the miraculous faculties of our subcon- 
sciousness. 

But, to return more directly to what we 
were saying, was It not observed that, after 
the great battles of the Napoleonic era, the 
birth-rate increased In an extraordinary 
manner, as though the lives suddenly cut 
short in their prime were not really dead 
and were eager to be back again in our 
midst and complete their career? If we 

^Kokoro: Hints and Echoes of Japanese Life, chap- 
ter xiv., "Some thoughts about Ancestor-Worship." 

l88 



The Dead Do not Die 

could follow with our eyes all that is hap- 
pening in the spiritual world that rises 
above us on every side, we should no doubt 
see that it is the same with the moral force 
that seems to be lost on the field of slaugh- 
ter. It knows where to go, it knows its 
goal, it does not hesitate. All that our 
wonderful dead relinquish they bequeath to 
us; and when they die for us, they leave 
us their lives not in any strained meta- 
phorical sense, but in a very real and direct 
way. Virtue goes out of every man who 
falls while performing a deed of glory; 
and that virtue drops down upon us; and 
nothing of him is lost and nothing evapor- 
ates in the shock of a premature end. He 
gives us in one solitary and mighty stroke 
what he would have given us in a long life 
of duty and love. Death does not injure 
life; it is powerless against it. Life's ag- 
gregate never changes. What death takes 
from those who fall enters into those who 

i8q 



The Wrack of the Storm 

are left standing. The number of lamps 
grows less, but the flame rises higher. 
Death is in no wise the gainer so long as 
there are living men. The more it exercises 
its ravages, the more it increases the in- 
tensity of that which it cannot touch; the 
more it pursues its phantom victories, the 
better does it prove to us that man will end 
by conquering death. 



tpo 



IN MEMORIAM 



XV 

IN MEMORIAM 
I 

THOSE who die for their country 
should not be numbered with the dead. 
We must call them by another name. They 
have nothing in common with those who 
end in their beds a life that is worn out, a 
life almost always too long and often use- 
less. Death, which every elsewhere is but 
the object of fear and horror, bringing 
naught but nothingness and despair, this 
death, on the field of battle, in the clash 
of glory, becomes more gracious than birth 
and exhales a beauty greater than that of 
love. No life will ever give what their 
youth is offering us, that youth which gives 
in one moment the days and the years that 
lay before it. There is no sacrifice to be 
compared with that which they have made ; 

193 



The Wrack of the Storm 

for which reason there is no glory that can 
soar so high as theirs, no gratitude that can 
surpass the gratitude which we owe them. 
They have not only a right to the foremost 
place in our memories: they have a right 
to all our memories and to everything that 
we are, since we exist only through them. 



And now it is In us that their life, so 
suddenly cut short, must resume its course. 
Whatever be our faith and whatever the 
God whom it adores, one thing is almost 
certain and, in spite of all appearances, is 
daily becoming more certain: it is that 
death and life are commingled; the dead 
and the living alike are but moments, 
hardly dissimilar, of a single and infinite 
existence and members of one Immortal 
family. They are not beneath the earth, 
In the depths of their tombs ; they He deep 
In our hearts, where all that they once were 

194 



In Memoriam 

win continue to live to to act; and they live 
In us even as we die In them. They see us, 
they understand us more nearly than when 
they were In our arms; let us then keep a 
watch upon ourselves, so that they witness 
no actions and hear no words but words 
and actions that shall be worthy of them. 



195 



SUPERNATURAL COMMUNICA- 
TIONS IN WAR-TIME 



XVI 

SUPERNATURAL COMMUNICATIONS IN 
WAR-TIME 

I 

IN A volume entitled The Unknown 
Guest, published not long ago, among 
other essays I devoted one In particu- 
lar^ to certain phenomena of Intuition, 
clairvoyance or clalraudlence, vision at 
great distance and even vision of the future. 
These phenomena were grouped together 
under the somewhat unsuitable and none 
too well-constructed title of *'psychometry," 
which, to borrow Dr. Maxwell's excellent 
definition, Is "the faculty possessed by cert- 
ain persons of placing themselves In re- 
lation, either spontaneously or, for the 
most part, through the Intermediary of 

* Chap. ii. : "Psychometry." 

199 



The Wrack of the Storm 

some object, with unknown and often very 
distant things and people." 

The existence of this faculty Is no longer 
seriously denied by any one who has given 
some little attention to metapsychlcs ; and 
It Is easily verified by those who will take 
the necessary trouble, for Its possessors, 
though few In number, are not Inaccessible. 
It has been the subject of many experi- 
ments and of a few treatises, among which 
I will name one by M. Duchatel, 
Enqiiete sur des cas de psychometric, and 
Dr. Osty's recent book, Lucidite et 
intuition, which Is the most complete and 
searching work that we have had upon this 
question until now. 

Psychometry Is one of the most curious 
faculties of our subconsciousness and doubt- 
less contains the clue to many of those 
manifestations which appear to proceed 
from another world. Let us see, with the 
aid of a living example, how It is employed. 

200 



Supernatural Communications 

One of the best mediums of this class 
Is a lady to whom I referred In The Un- 
known Guest as Mme. M. Her visitor 
gives her an object of some kind that 
has belonged to or been touched or han- 
dled by the person about whom he pro- 
poses to question her. Mme. M. oper- 
ates In a state of trance; but there are 
other celebrated psychometers who retain 
all their normal consciousness, so that the 
hypnotic or somnambulistic state Is not, 
generally speaking, by any means indispen- 
sable when we wish to arouse this extraor- 
dinary clairvoyance. 

After placing the object, usually a let- 
ter, In the medium's hands, you say to her : 

'*I wish you to put yourself In com- 
munication with the writer of this letter," 
or "the owner of this article," as the case 
may be. 

Forthwith the medium not only per- 
ceives the person In question, his physical 

201 



The Wrack of the Storm 

appearance, his character, his habits, his in- 
terests, his state of health, but also, in a 
series of swift and changing visions that 
follow one another like the pictures of a 
cinematograph, sees and describes exactly 
that person's environment, the surrounding 
country, the rooms in which he lives, the 
people who live with him and who wish 
him well or ill, the mentality and the most 
secret and unexpected intentions of all the 
various characters that figure in his exist- 
ence. If by means of your questions you 
direct her towards the past, she traces the 
whole course of the subject's history. If 
you turn her towards the future, she seems 
often to discover it as clearly as the past. 
But here we must make certain reserva- 
tions. We are entering upon forbidden 
tracts; errors are almost the rule and 
proper supervision is all but impossible. It 
is better therefore not to venture into those 
dangerous regions. Pending fuller inves- 

202 



Supernatural Communications 

tigation of the question, we may say that 
the foretelling of the future, when it claims 
to cover a definite space of time, Is nearly 
always Illusory. There Is scarcely any 
accuracy of vision, except when the events 
concerned are very near at hand, already 
developing or actually being consummated ; 
and It then becomes difficult to distinguish 
it from presentiments, which In their turn 
are rarely true except where the immedi- 
ate future Is concerned. To sum up, in 
the present state of our experience, we ob- 
serve that what the psychometers and clair- 
voyants foretell us possesses a certain value 
and some chance of proving correct only 
in so far as they put into words our own 
forebodings, forebodings which again may 
be quite unknown to us and which they dis- 
cover deep down in our subconsciousness. 
They confine themselves — I speak of the 
genuine mediums — to bringing to light and 
revealing to us our unconscious and per- 

203 



The Wrack of the Storm 

sonal intuition of an event that Is hanging 
over us. But, when they venture to predict 
a general event, such as the result of a war, 
an epidemic, an earthquake, which does 
not interest ourselves exclusively or which 
is too remote to come within the somewhat 
limited scope of our intuition, they almost 
invariably deceive themselves and uS. 

It Is very difficult to fathom the nature 
of this intuition. Does It relate to events 
partly or wholly realized, but still In a 
latent state and perceived before the know- 
ledge of them reaches us through the norm- 
al channels of the mind or brain? Does 
our ever-watchful Instinct of self-preserva- 
tion notice causes or traces which escape 
our ever-inattentive and slumbering rea- 
son? Are we to believe in a sort of auto- 
suggestion that Induces us to realize things 
which we have been foretold or of which 
we have had presentiments? This is not 
the place to examine so complex a problem, 

204 



Supernatural Communications 

which brings us into contact with all the 
mysteries of subconsciousness and the 
preexistence of the future. 

There remains another point to which it 
is well to draw attention in order to avoid 
misunderstanding and disappointment. Ex- 
perience shows us that the medium per- 
ceives the person in question quite clearly, 
in his present and usual state, but not ne- 
cessarily in the exact accidental state of the 
moment. She will tell you, for instance, 
that she sees him ailing slightly, lying in a 
deck-chair in a garden of such and such a 
kind, surrounded by certain flowers and 
petting a dog of a certain size and breed. 
On enquiring, you will find that all these 
details are strictly correct, with one excep- 
tion, that at that precise moment this 
person, who ordinarily spends his time in 
the garden, was inside his house or call- 
ing on a neighbour. Mistakes in time 
therefore are comparatively frequent and 

205 



The Wrack of the Storm 

simultaneity between action and vision com- 
paratively rare. In short, the habitual 
often masks the accidental action. This, I 
insist, is a point of which we must not lose 
sight, lest we ask of psychometry more 
than it is obviously able to give us. 

2 

Having said so much, is it open to us, 
amid all the mental anguish and suffering 
which this terrible war has engendered, 
without profaning the sorrow of our fel- 
low-men and women, to give to those who 
are in mortal fear as to the fate of some one 
xvhom they love the hope of finding, among 
those extrahuman phenomena which have 
been unjustly and falsely disparaged, a con- 
soling gleam of light that shall not be a 
mere mockery or delusion? I venture to 
declare — and I am doing so not thought- 
lessly, but after studying the problem with 
the conscientious attention which it de- 

206 



Supernatural Communications 

mands and after personally making a 
number of experiments or causing them to 
be made under my supervision — I venture 
to declare, without for a moment losing 
sight of the respect due to grief, that we 
possess here, in these indisputable cases 
where no normal mode of communication 
is possible, a strange but real and serious 
source of information and comfort. I 
could mention a large number of tests that 
have been made, so to speak, before my 
eyes by absolutely trustworthy relatives or 
friends. 

As my space is limited, I will relate 
only one, which typifies and summarizes 
all the others very fairly. A mother 
had three sons at the front. She was hear- 
ing pretty regularly from the eldest and 
the second; but for some weeks the young- 
est, who was in the Belgian trenches, where 
the fighting was very fierce, had given no 

sign of life. Wild with anxiety, she was 

207 



The Wrack of the Storm 

already mourning him as dead when her 
friends advised her to consult Mme. M. 
The medium consoled her with the first 
words that she spoke and told her that she 
saw her son wounded, but In no danger 
whatever, that he was In a sort of shed 
fitted up as a hospital, that he was being 
very well looked after by people who spoke 
a different language, that for the time be- 
ing he was unable to write, which was a 
great worry to him, but that she would re- 
ceive a letter from him In a few days. The 
mother did, in fact, receive a card from 
this son a few days later, worded a little 
stiffly and curtly and written In an un- 
natural hand, telling her that all was well 
and that he was In good health. Greatly 
relieved, she dismissed the matter from 
her mind, merely said to herself that of 
course the medium, like all mediums, had 
been wrong and thought no more of it. 

But two or three messages following on the 

208 



Supernatural Communications 

first, all couched In short, stilted phrases 
that seemed to be hiding something, 
ended by alarming her so much that she 
was unable to bear the strain any longer 
and entreated her son to tell her the whole 
truth, whatever It might be. He then 
admitted that he had been wounded, 
though not seriously, adding that he 
was In a sort of shed fitted up as a 
hospital, where he was being capitally 
looked after by English doctors and 
nurses. In short, just as the medium 
had seen him. 

I repeat, medlumlstic experience can 
show other Instances of this kind. If it 
stood alone, it would be valueless, for it 
might well be explained by mere coinci- 
dence. But It forms part of a very normal 
series; and I could easily enumerate many 
others within my own knowledge. This, 
however, would merely mean repeating, 
with uninteresting variations, the essential 

209 



The Wrack of the Storm 

features of the present case, a proceeding 
for which there would be no excuse save 
In a technical work. 

Is success then practically certain? Yes, 
rash and surprising though the statement 
may seem, mistakes upon the whole are 
very rare, provided that the medium be 
carefully chosen and that the object serving 
as an intermediary have not passed through 
too many hands, for it will contain and re- 
veal as many distinct personalities as it has 
undergone contacts. It will be necessary, 
therefore, first to eliminate all these acces- 
sory personalities, so as to {ix the medium's 
attention solely on the subject of the con- 
sultation. On the other hand, we must 
beware of calling for details which the 
nature of the medium's vision does not 
allow her to give us. If asked, for in- 
stance, about a soldier who Is a prisoner in 
Germany, she will see the soldier in quest- 
ion very plainly, will perceive his state of 

210 



Supernatural Communications 

health and mind, the manner in which he Is 
treated, his companions, the fortress or 
group of huts in which he is interned, the 
appearance of the camp, of the town, of 
the surrounding district; but she will very 
seldom Indeed be able to mention the name 
of the camp, town or district. In fact, she 
can describe only what she sees; and, un- 
less the town or camp have a board bear- 
ing Its name, there will be nothing to enable 
her to identify It with sufficient accuracy. 
Let us add, lastly, that, with mediums in a 
state of trance, who are not conscious of 
what they are saying, we are exposed to 
terrible shocks. If they see death, they 
announce the fact bluntly, without suspect- 
ing that they are in the presence of a 
horror-stricken mother, wife or sister, so 
much so that, in the case of Mme. M. parti- 
cularly. It has been found necessary to take 
certain precautions to obviate any such 
shock. 

211 



The Wrack of the Storm 

3 

Now what is the nature of this strange 

and incredible faculty ? In the book which 
I mentioned at the beginning of this article, 
I tried to examine the different theories 
that suggested themselves. The argument, 
unfortunately, is infinitely too long to be re- 
published here, even if I were to compress 
it ruthlessly. I will give merely a brief 
summary of the conclusions, or rather of 
the attempted conclusions, for the mystery, 
like most of the world's mysteries, is pro- 
bably unfathomable. After dismissing the 
spiritualistic theory, which implies the in- 
tervention of the dead or of discarnate 
entitles and is not as ridiculous as the pro- 
fane would think, but which nothing 
hitherto has adequately confirmed, we may 
reasonably ask ourselves first of all whether 
this faculty exists in us or in the medium. 
Does it simply decipher, as is probably the 
case where the future is concerned, the latent 

212 



Supernatural Communications 

ideas, knowledge and certainties which we 
bear within us, or does it alone, of its own 
initiative and independently of us, perceive 
what it reveals to us? Experience seems 
to show that we must adopt the latter 
hypothesis, for the vision appears just as 
distinctly when the illuminating object is 
brought by a third person who knows no- 
thing and has never heard of the individual 
to whom the object once belonged. It 
seems therefore almost certain that the 
strange virtue is contained solely in the 
object itself, which is somehow galvanized 
by a complementary virtue in the medium. 
This being so, we must presume that the 
object, having absorbed like a sponge a 
portion of the spirit of the person who 
touched it, remains in constant communica- 
tion with him, or, more probably, that it 
serves to track out, among the prodigious 
throng of human beings, the one who im- 
pregnated it with his fluid, even as the dogs 

213 



The Wrack of the Storm 

employed by the police — at least so we are 
told — when given an article of clothing to 
smell, are able to distinguish, among in- 
numerable cross-trails, that of the man who 
used to wear the garment in question. It 
seems more and more certain that, as cells 
of one vast organism, we are connected 
with everything that exists by an infinitely 
intricate network of waves, vibrations, in- 
fluences, currents and fluids, all nameless, 
numberless and unbroken. Nearly always, 
in nearly all men, everything transmitted 
by these invisible threads falls into the 
depths of the subconsciousness and passes 
unperceived, which is not the same as say- 
ing that it remains inactive. But sometimes 
an exceptional circumstance, such as, in the 
present case, the marvellous sensibility of a 
first-rate medium, suddenly reveals to us 
the existence of the infinite living network 
by the vibrations and the undeniable opera- 
tion of one of its threads. 

214 



Supernatural Communications 

All this, I agree, sounds incredible, but 
really it is hardly any more so than the won- 
ders of radioactivity, of the Hertzian 
waves, of photography, electricity or hyp- 
notism, or of generation, which condenses 
into a single particle all the physical, moral 
and intellectual past and future of thou- 
sands of creatures. Our life would be re- 
duced to something very small indeed if we 
deliberately dismissed from it all that our 
understanding is unable to embrace. 



215 



EDITH CAVELL 



./ 



XVII 

EDITH CAVELL^ 
I 

TO-DAY, In honouring the memory of 
Miss Edith Cavell, we honour not 
only the heroine who fell in the midst of 
her labours of love and piety, we honour 
also those, wherever they may be, who have 
accomplished or will yet accomplish the 
same sacrifice and who are ready, in like 
circumstances, to face a like death. 

We are told by Thucydides that the 
Athenians of the age of Pericles — who, to 
the honour of humanity be It said, had 
nothing in common with the Athenians of 
to-day — were accustomed, each winter du- 
ring their great war, to celebrate at the cost 
of the State the obsequies of those who had 

^ Delivered In Paris, at the Trocadero, i8 December, 
1915. 

219 



The Wrack of the Storm 

perished in the recent campaign. The 
bones of the dead, arranged according to 
their tribes, were exhibited under a tent 
and honoured for three days. In the midst 
of this host of the known dead stood an 
empty bed, covered with tapestry and dedi- 
cated to "the Invisible," that is, to those 
whose bodies it had been impossible to re- 
cover. Let us too, before all else, in the 
quiet of this hall, where none but almost 
religious words may be heard, raise in our 
midst such an altar, a sacred and mysteri- 
ous altar, to the invisible heroines of this 
war, that is to say, to all those who have 
died an obscure death and have left no 
traces and also to those who are yet living, 
whose sacrifices and sufferings will never 
be told. Here, with the eyes of the spirit, 
let us gaze upon all the heroic deeds of 
which we know; but let us reserve an hon- 
oured place for those. Incomparably more 
numerous and perhaps more beautiful, of 

220 



Edith Cavell 

which we as yet know nothing and, above 
all, for those of which we shall never know, 
for glory has its injustices even as death 
has its fatalities. 

2 

Yet it is hardly probable that among 
these sacrifices we shall discern any more 
admirable than that of Miss Edith Cavell. 
I need not recall the circumstances of her 
death, for they are well-known to every- 
body and will never be forgotten. Des- 
tiny left nothing undone for the purest 
glory to emerge from the deepest shadow. 
In the depths of that shadow it concen- 
trated all imaginable hatred, horror, vil- 
lainy, cowardice and infamy, so that all 
pity, all innocent courage and mercy, all 
well-doing and all sweet charity might 
shine forth above it, as though to show us 
how low men may sink and how high a 
woman can rise, as though its express and 
visible intention had been to trace, with a. 

221 



The Wrack of the Storm 

single gesture, amid all the sorrows and 
the rare beauties of this war, an outstand- 
ing and incomparable example which 
should at the same time be an immortal and 
consoling symbol. 

3 

And one would say that destiny had 
taken pains to make this symbol as truth- 
ful and as general as possible. It did not 
select a dazzling and warlike heroine, as 
it would have done in the days of old : a Ju- 
dith, a Lucretia, nor even a Joan of Arc. 
There was no need of resounding words, 
of splendid raiment, of tragic attitudes and 
accessories, of an imposing background. 
The beauty which we find so touching has 
grown simpler; it makes less stir and wins 
closer to our heart. And this Is why des- 
tiny sought out in obscurity a little hospital 
nurse, one of many thousands of others. 
The sight of her unpretentious portrait 
does not tell one whether she was rich or 

222 



Edith Cavell 

poor, a humble member of the middle 
classes or a great lady. She would pass 
unnoticed anywhere until the hour of trial, 
when glory recognizes its elect; and it 
seems as though goodness had almost eli- 
minated the individual contours of her face, 
so that It might the more closely resemble 
the pensive and sad smiling faces of all 
the good women in the world. 

Beneath those features one might Indeed 
have read the hidden devotion and quiet 
heroism of all the women who do their 
duty, that Is, of those whom we see 
about us day by day, working, hoping, 
keeping vigil, solacing and succouring 
others, wearing themselves out without 
complaint, suffering In secret and mourning 
their dead In silence. 

4 

She passed like a flash of light which for 

one moment illumined that vast and In- 

223 



The Wrack of the Storm 

numerable multitude, confirming our con- 
fidence and our admiration. She has 
added a final beauty to the great revela- 
tions of this war; for the war, which has 
taught us many things that will never fade 
from our memory, has above all revealed 
us to ourselves. In the first days of the 
terrible ordeal, we did not know for cert- 
ain how men and women would comport 
themselves. In vain did we interrogate 
the past, hoping thereby to learn something 
of the future. There was no past that 
would serve for a comparison. Our eyes 
were drawn back to the present; and we 
closed them, full of uneasiness. In what 
condition should we find ourselves facing 
duty, sacrifice, suffering and death, after 
so many years of peace, well-being and 
pleasure, of heedlessness and moral indif- 
ference? What had been the vast and 
invisible journey of the human conscience 
and of those secret forces which are the 

224 



Edith Cavell 

whole of man, during this long respite, 
when they had never been called upon to 
confront fate? Were they asleep, were 
they weakened or lost, would they respond 
to the call of destiny, or had they sunk so 
deep that they would never recover the 
energy to ascend to the surface of life? 
There was a moment of anguish and si- 
lence ; and lo, suddenly, in the midst of this 
anguish and silence, the most splendid re- 
sponse, the most magnificent cry of resur- 
rection, of righteousness, of heroism and 
sacrifice that the earth has ever heard since 
it began to roll along the paths of space 
and time ! They were still there, the ideal 
forces ! They were mounting upward, on 
every side, from the depths of all those 
swiftly-assembling souls, not merely intact 
but more than ever radiant, more than ever 
pure, more numerous and mightier than 
ever! To the amazement of all of us, 
who possessed them without knowing it, 

225 



The Wrack of the Storm 

they had increased in strength and stature 
while apparently neglected and forgotten. 
To-day there is no longer any doubt. 
We may expect all things and hope all 
things from the men and the women who 
have surmounted this long and grievous 
trial. If the heroism displayed by man on 
the battlefield has never been comparable 
with that which is being lavished at this 
moment, we may also say of the women 
that their heroism is even more beyond 
comparison. We knew that a certain 
number of men were capable of giving their 
lives for their country, for their faith or for 
a generous ideal; but we did not realize 
that all would wrestle with death for end- 
less months, in great unanimous masses; 
and above all we did not imagine, or per- 
haps we had to some extent forgotten, 
since the days of the great martyrs, that 
woman was ready with the same gift of 
self, the same patience, the same sacrifices, 

226 



Edith Cavell 

the same greatness of soul and was about- 
less perhaps in blood than in tears, for it 
is always on her that sorrow ends by falling 
— to prove herself the rival and the peer 
of man. 



227 



THE LIFE OF THE DEAD 



XVIII 

THE LIFE OF THE DEAD 
I 

THE Other day I went to see a woman 
whom I knew before the war — she 
was happy then — and who had lost her 
only son in one of the battles In the Ar- 
gonne. She was a widow, almost a poor 
woman; and, now that this son, her pride 
and her joy, was no more, she no longer 
had any reason for living. I hesitated to 
knock at her door. Was I not about to 
witness one of those hopeless griefs at 
whose feet all words fall to the ground like 
shameful and insulting lies? Which of us 
to-day is not familiar with these mournful 
interviews, this dismal duty? 

To my great astonishment, she offered 
me her hand with a kindly smile. Her 

231 



The Wrack of the Storm 

eyes, to which I hardly dared raise my 
own, were free of tears. 

"You have come to speak to me of him," 
she said, in a cheerful tone; and it was 
as though her voice had grown younger. 

"Alas, yes! I had heard of your sor- 
sow; and I have come. . ." 

"Yes, I too believed that my unhappi- 
ness was irreparable ; but now I know that 
he is not dead.'* 

"What! He is not dead? Do you 
mean that the news . . . ? But I thought 
that the body. . ." 

"Yes, his body is down there ; and I have 
even a photograph of his grave. Let me 
show it to you. See, that cross on the left, 
the fourth cross: that is where they have 
laid him. One of his friends, who buried 
him, sent me this card, with all the details. 
He did not suffer any pain. There was 
not even a death-struggle. And he has told 
me so himself. He is quite astonished that 

232 



The Life of the Dead 

death should be so easy, so slight a thing. 
. . .You do not understand? Yes, I see 
what it is : you are just as I used to be, as 
all the others are. I do not explain the 
matter to the others; what would be the 
use? They do not wish to understand. 
But you, you will understand. He is more 
alive than he ever was; he is free and 
happy. He does just as he likes. He tells 
me that one cannot imagine what a release 
death is, what a weight it removes from 
you, nor the joy which it brings. He comes 
to see me when I call him. He loves es- 
pecially to come in the evening; and we 
chat as we used to do. He has not al- 
tered; he is just as he was on the day when 
he went away, only younger, stronger, 
handsomer. We have never been happier, 
or more united, or nearer to one another. 
He divines my thoughts before I utter 
them. He knows everything; he sees 
everything; but he cannot tell me every- 

233 



The Wrack of the Storm 

thing he knows. He says that I must be 
wanting to follow him and that I must 
wait for my hour. And, while I wait, we 
are living in happiness greater than that 
which was ours before the war, a happi- 
ness which nothing can ever trouble 
again. ..." 

Those about her pitied the poor woman ; 
and, as she did not weep, as she was gay 
and smiling, they believed her mad. 



Was she as mad as they thought? At 
the present moment, the great questions of 
the world beyond the grave are pressing 
upon us from every side. It is probable 
that, since the world began, there have 
never been so many dead as now. The 
empire of death was never so mighty, so 
terrible; it is for us to defend and enlarge 
the empire of life. In the presence of this 
mother, which are right or wrong, those 

234 



The Life of the Dead 

who are convinced that their dead are for- 
ever swept out of existence, or those who 
are persuaded that their dead do not cease 
to live, who believe that they see them and 
hear them? Do we know what it is that 
dies in our dead, or even if anything dies? 
Whatever our religious faith may be, there 
Is at any rate one place where they cannot 
die. That place Is within ourselves; and, 
if this unhappy mother went beyond the 
truth, she was yet nearer to it than those 
despairing ones who nourish the mournful 
certainty that nothing survives of those 
whom they loved. She felt too keenly 
what we do not feel keenly enough. She 
remembered too much; and we do not 
know how to remember. Between the two 
errors there is room for a great truth ; and, 
If we have to choose, hers is the error 
towards which we should lean. Let us 
learn to acquire through reason that which 
a wise madness bestowed on her. Let us 

235 



The Wrack of the Storm 

learn from her to live with our dead and 
to live with them without sadness and with- 
out terror. They do not ask for tears, but 
for a happy and confident affection. Let 
us learn from her to resuscitate those whom 
we regret. She called to hers, while we 
repulse ours; we are afraid of them and 
are surprised that they lose heart and pale 
and fade away and leave us forever. They 
need love as much as do the living. Then 
die, not at the moment when they sink into 
the grave, but gradually as they sink into 
oblivion ; and it is oblivion alone that makes 
the separation irrevocable. We should 
not allow it to heap itself above them. It 
would be enough to vouchsafe them each 
day a single one of those thoughts which 
we bestow uncounted upon so many use- 
less objects: they would no longer think 
of leaving us; they would remain around 
us and we should no longer understand 
what a tomb is ; for there is no tomb, how- 

236 



The Life of the Dead 

ever deep, whose stone may not be raised 
and whose dust dispersed by a thought. 

There would be no difference between 
the living and the dead if we but knew how 
to remember. There would be no more 
dead. The best of what they were dwells 
with us after fate has taken them from us; 
all their past Is ours; and it is wider than 
the present, more certain than the future. 
Material presence is not everything in this 
world ; and we can dispense with it and yet 
not despair. We do not mourn those who 
live in lands which we shall never visit, be- 
cause we know that it depends on us 
whether we go to find them. Let it be 
the same with our dead. Instead of be- 
lieving that they have disappeared never 
to return, tell yourselves that they are in 
a country to which you yourself will as- 
suredly go soon ; a country not so very far 
away. And, while waiting for the time 
when you will go there once and for all, 

237 



The Wrack of the Storm 

you may visit them m thougnt as easily as 
if they were still in a region inhabited by 
the living. The memory of the dead is 
even more alive than that of the living; it 
is as though they were assisting our me- 
mory, as though they, on their side, were 
making a mysterious effort to join hands 
with us on ours. One feels that they are 
far more powerful than the absent who 
continue to breathe as we do. 

3 

Try then to recall those whom you have 
lost, before it is too late, before they have 
gone too far; and you will see that they 
will come much closer to your heart, that 
they will belong to you more truly, that 
they are as real as when they were in the 
flesh. In putting off this last, they have 
but discarded the moments in which they 
loved us least or in which we did not love 
at all. Now they are pure; they are 

238 



The Life of the Dead 

clothed only in the fairest hours of life; 
they no longer possess faults, littlenesses, 
oddities; they can no longer fall away, or 
deceive themselves, or give us pain. They 
care for nothing now but to smile upon us, 
to encompass us with love, to bring us a 
happiness drawn without stint from a past 
which they live again beside us. 



239 



THE WAR AND 
THE PROPHETS 



XIX 

THE WAR AND THE PROPHETS 

AT the end of an essay occurring In 
The Unknown Guest and entitled, 
The Knowledge of the Future^ In which 
I examined a certain number of phenomena 
relating to the anticipatory perception of 
events, such as presentiments, premoni- 
tions, precognitions, predictions, etc., I 
concluded In nearly the following terms: 

*'To sum up. If it Is difficult for us to 
conceive that the future preexists, perhaps 
It Is just as difficult for us to understand 
that It does not exist; moreover, many 
facts tend to prove that It is as real and 
definite and has, both In time and eternity, 
the same permanence and the same vivid- 
ness as the past. Now, from the moment 
that it preexists, it is not surprising that 

243 



The Wrack of the Storm 

we snould be able to know it; it is even 
astonishing, granted that it overhangs us 
from every side, that we should not dis- 
cover it oftener and more easily." 

Above all is it astonishing and almost 
inconceivable that this universal war, the 
most stupendous catastrophe that has over- 
whelmed humanity since the origin of 
things, should not, w^hile it was approach- 
ing, bearing in its womb innumerable woes 
which were about to affect almost every 
one of us, have thrown upon us more 
plainly, from the recesses of those days In 
which it was making ready, its menacing 
shadow. One would think that it ought 
to have overcast the whole horizon of 
the future, even as it will overcast the 
whole horizon of the past. A secret of 
such weight, suspended in time, ought 
surely to have weighed upon all our lives; 
and presentiments or revelations should 

244 



The War and the Prophets 

have arisen on every hand. There was 
none of these. We Hved and moved with- 
out uneasiness beneath the disaster which, 
from year to year, from day to day, from 
hour to hour, was descending upon the 
world; and we perceived it only when it 
touched our heads. True, it was more or 
less foreseen by our reason ; but our reason 
hardly believed in it; and besides I am 
not for the moment speaking of the induc- 
tions of the understanding, which are al- 
ways uncertain and which are resigned be- 
forehand to the capricious contradictions 
which they are accustomed daily to receive 
from facts. 

2 

But I repeat, beside or above these In- 
ductions of our everyday logic, in the less 
familiar domain of supernatural intuitions, 
of divination, prediction or prophecy pro- 
perly so-called, we find that there was prac- 
tically nothing to warn us of the vast perlL 

245 



The Wrack of the Storm 

This does not mean that there was any 
lack of predictions or prophecies collected 
after the event; these number, it appears, 
no fewer than eighty-three; but none of 
them, excepting those of Leon Sonrel and 
the Rector of Ars, which we will examine 
in a moment, is worthy of serious discus- 
sion. I shall therefore mention, by way of 
a reminder, only the most widely known; 
and, first of all, the famous prophecy of 
Mayence or Strasburg, which is supposed 
to have been discovered by a certain Jecker 
in an ancient convent founded near May- 
ence by St. Hildegard, of which the original 
text could not be found and of which no 
one until lately had ever heard. Then 
there is another prophecy of Mayence or 
Fiensberg, published in the Neue Metaphy- 
sische Rundschau of Berlin in February, 
191 2, in which the end of the German Em- 
pire is announced for the year 19 13. Next, 

we have various predictions uttered by 

246 



The War and the Prophets 

Mme. de Thebes, by Dom Bosco, by the 
Blessed Andrew Bobola, by Korzenlcki, 
the Polish monk, by Tolstoy, by Brother 
Hermann and so on, which are even less 
Interesting; and lastly the prophecy of 
^'Brother Johannes," published by M. 
Josephin Peladan In the Figaro of i6 
September, 19 14, which contains no evi- 
dence of genuineness and must therefore 
meanwhile be regarded merely as an In- 
genious literary conceit. 

2 

All these, on examination, leave but a 
worthless residuum; but the prophecies of 
the Rector of Ars and of Leon Sonrel are 
more curious and worthy of a moment's 
attention. 

Father Jean-Baptiste Vlanney, Rector 
of Ars, was, as everybody knows, a very 
saintly priest, who appears to have 
been endowed with extraordinary me- 

247 



The Wrack of the Storm 

diumlstic faculties. The prophecy in quest- 
ion was made public In 1862, three years 
after the miracle-worker's death, and was 
confirmed by a letter which Mgr. Perriet 
addressed to the Very Rev. Dom Grea on 
the 24th of February, 1908. Moreover, It 
was printed, as far back as 1872, In a 
collection entitled, Voix prophetiques, ou 
signes, apparitions et predictions modei'nes. 
It therefore has an Incontestable date. I 
pass over the part relating to the war of 
1870, which does not offer the same safe- 
guards ; but I give that which concerns the 
present war, quoting from the 1872 text: 

"The enemies will not go altogether; 
they will return again and destroy every- 
thing upon their passage; we shall not re- 
sist them, but will allow them to advance; 
and after that we shall cut off their provi- 
sions and make them suffer great losses. 
They will retreat towards their country; 

248 



The War and the Prophets 

we shall follow them and there will be 
hardly any who return home. Then we 
shall take back all that they took from us 
and much more." 

As for the date of the event, it is stated 
definitely and rather strikingly in these 
words : 

"They will want to canonize me, but 
there will not be time." 

Now the preliminaries to the canoniza- 
tion of Father Vianney were begun in July, 
19 14, but abandoned because of the war. 

I now come to the Sonrel prediction. 
I will summarize It as briefly as possible 
from the admirable article which M. de 
Vesme devoted to it in the Annates des 
sciences psychiques} 

On the 3rd of June, 19 14 — observe the 
date — Professor Charles RIchet handed M. 
de Vesme, from Dr. Amedee Tardieu, a 

^August, September and October, 1915. 

249 



The Wrack of the Storm 

manuscript of which the following is the 
substance: on the 23rd or 24th of July, 
1869, Dr. Tardieu was strolling in the gar- 
dens of the Luxembourg with his friend 
Leon Sonrel, a former pupil of the Higher 
Normal School and teacher of natural phi- 
losophy at the Paris Observatory, when the 
latter had a kind of vision in the course of 
which he predicted various precise and act- 
ual episodes of the war of 1870, such as the 
collection on behalf of the wounded at the 
moment of departure and the amount of 
the sum collected in the soldiers' kepis; in- 
cidents of the journey to the frontier; the 
battle of Sedan, the rout of the French, 
the civil war, the siege of Paris, his own 
death, the birth of a posthumous child, 
the doctor's political career and so on: 
predictions all of which were verified, as 
is attested by numerous witnesses who are 
worthy of the fullest credence. But I will 

pass over this part of the story and con- 

250 



The War and the Prophets 

sider only that portion which refers to the 
present war : 

"I have been waiting for two years," to 
quote the text of Dr. Tardieu's manuscript 
of the 3rd of June, "for the sequel of the 
prediction which you are about to read. I 
omit everything that concerns my friend 
Leon's family and my private affairs. 
Yet there is in my life at this moment a 
personal matter, which, as always happens, 
agrees too closely with general occurrences 
for me to doubt what follows : 

" *0 my God! My country is lost: 
France is dead! . . . What a disaster! . . . 
Ah, see, she is saved! She extends to the 
Rhine ! O France, O my beloved country, 
you are triumphant; you are the queen of 
nations ! . . . Your genius shines forth 
over the world. . . . All the earth won- 
ders at you. . . .' " 

251 



The Wrack of the Storm 

These are the words contained In the 
document written at the Mont-Dore on 
the 3rd and handed to M. de Vesme 
on the 13th of June 19 14, at a moment 
when no one was thinking of the ter- 
rible war which to-day is ravaging half the 
world. 

When questioned, after the declaration 
of war, by M. de Vesme on the subject 
of the prophetic phrase, "I have been 
waiting for two years for the sequel of 
the prediction which you are about to 
read," Dr. Tardieu replied, on the 12th of 
August : 

"I have been waiting for two years; and 
I will tell you why. My friend Leon did 
not name the year, but the more general 
events are described simultaneously with 
the events of my own life. Now the events 
which concern me privately and which 
were doubtful two years ago became cert- 
ain in April or May last. My friends 

252 



The War and the Prophets 

know that since May last I have been an- 
nouncing war as due before September, 
basing my prediction on coincidences with 
events In my private life of which I do not 
speak." 

4 • 

These, up to the present, are the only 
prophecies known to us that deserve any 
particular attention. The prediction in 
both is timid and laconic; but, In those 
regions where the least gleam of light as- 
sumes extraordinary Importance, it Is not 
to be neglected. I admit, for the rest, 
that there has so far been no time to carry 
out a serious enquiry on this point, but I 
should be greatly surprised if any such en- 
quiry gave positive results and if it did not 
allowed us to state that the gigantic event, 
as a whole, as a general event, was neither 
foreseen nor divined. On the other hand, 
we shall probably learn, when the enquiry is 

253 



The Wrack of the Storm 

completed, that hundreds of deaths, acci- 
dents, wounds and cases of individual ruin 
and misfortune, included in the great disas- 
ter, were predicted by clairvoyants, by me- 
diums, by dreams and by every other man- 
ner of premonition with a definiteness 
sufficient to eliminate any kind of doubt. I 
have said elsewhere what I think of indivi- 
dual predictions of this kind, which seem to 
be no more than the reading of the presenti- 
ments which we carry within us, presenti- 
ments which themselves, in the majority of 
cases, are but the perception, by the as yet 
imperfectly known senses of our subcon- 
sciousness, of events, in course of formation 
or in process of realization, which escape 
the attention of our understanding. How- 
ever, it would still remain to be explained 
how a wholly accidental death or wound 
could be perceived by these subliminal 
senses as an event in course of formation. 
In any case, it would once more be con- 

254 



The War and the Prophets 

firmed, after this great test, that the know- 
ledge of the future, so soon as It ceases to 
refer to a strictly personal fact and one, 
moreover, not at all remote, Is always il- 
lusory, or rather Impossible. 

Apart then from these strictly personal 
cases, which for the moment we will agree 
to set aside, it appears more than ever cert- 
ain that there is no communication between 
ourselves and the vast store of events which 
have not yet occurred and which neverthe- 
less seem already to exist at some place 
where they await the hour to advance upon 
us, or rather the moment when we shall 
pass before them. As for the exceptional 
and precarious Infiltrations which belong 
not merely to the present that is still un- 
known, veiled or disguised, but really to 
the future, apart from the two which we 
have just examined, which are inconclusive, 
I for my part know of but four or five 
that appear to be rigorously verified; and 

255 



The Wrack of the Storm 

these I have discussed in the essay al- 
ready mentioned. For that matter, they 
have no bearing upon the present war. 
They are, when all Is said, so exceptional 
that they do not prove much; at the most, 
they seem to confirm the Idea that a store 
exists filled with future events as real, as 
distinct and as Immutable as those of the 
past; and they allow us to hope that there 
are paths leading thither which as yet we 
do not know, but which It will not be for 
rver impossible to discover. 



256 



THE WILL OF EARTH 



XX 

THE WILL OF EARTH 
I 

TO-DAY'S conflict is but a revival 
of that which has not ceased to 
drench the west of Europe In blood since 
the historical birth of the continent. The 
two chief episodes in the conflict, as we 
all know, are the invasion of Roman Gaul, 
including the north of Italy, by the Franks 
and the successive conquests of England 
by the Anglo-Saxons and the Normans. 
Without delaying to consider questions of 
race, which are complex, uncertain and al- 
ways open to discussion, we may, regarding 
the matter from another aspect, perceive 
In the persistency and the bitterness of this 
conflict the clash of two wills, of which one 
or the other succumbs for a moment, only 
to rise up again with Increased energy and 

259 



The Wrack of the Storm 

obstinacy. On the one hand Is the will of 
earth or nature, which, in the human 
species as In all others, openly favours 
brute or physical force; and on the other 
hand Is the will of humanity, or at least 
of a portion of humanity, which seeks to 
establish the empire of other more subtle 
and less animal forces. It is incontestable 
that hitherto the former has always won 
the day. But it Is equally incontestable 
that its victory has always been only ap- 
parent and of brief duration. It has 
regularly suffered defeat in its very tri- 
umph. Gaul, Invaded and overrun, pre- 
sently absorbs her victor, even as England 
little by little transforms her conquerors. 
On the morrow of victory, the Instruments 
of the will of earth turn upon her and arm 
the hand of the vanquished. It is proba- 
ble that the same phenomenon would recur 
once more to-day, were events to follow the 
course prescribed by destiny. Germany, 

260 



The Will of Earth 

after crushing and enslaving the greater 
part of Europe, after driving her back and 
burdening her with innumerable woes, 
would end by turning against the will which 
she represents; and that will, which until 
to-day had always found in this race a 
docile tool and its favourite accomplices, 
would be forced to seek these elsewhere, 
a task less easy than of old. 



But now, to the amazement of all those 
who will one day consider them in cold 
blood, events are suddenly ascending the 
irresistible current and, for the first time 
since we have been in a position to observe 
It, the adverse will is encountering an un- 
expected and insurmountable resistance. If 
this resistance, as we can now no longer 
doubt, maintains itself victoriously to the 
end, there will never perhaps have been 

such a sudden change in the history of man- 

261 



The Wrack of the Storm 

kind; for man will have gained, over the 
will of earth or nature or fatality, a tri- 
umph infinitely more significant, more 
heavily fraught with consequences and per- 
haps more decisive than all those which, 
in other provinces, appear to have crowned 
his efforts more brilliantly. 

Let us not then be surprised that this 
resistance should be stupendous, or that it 
should be prolonged beyond anything that 
our experience of wars has taught us to 
expect. It was our prompt and easy de- 
feat that was written in the annals of des- 
tiny. We had against us all the force ac- 
cumulated since the birth of Europe. We 
have to set history revolving in the reverse 
direction. We are on the point of suc- 
ceeding; and, if it be true that intelligent 
beings watch us from the vantage-point of 
other worlds, they will assuredly witness 
the most curious spectacle that our planet 

has offered them since they discovered it 

262 



The Will of Earth 

amid the dust of stars that glitters In space 
around it. They must be telling them- 
selves In amazement that the ancient and 
fundamental laws of earth are suddenly 
being transgressed. 

♦ 
3 

Suddenly? That Is going too far. This 

transgression of a lower law, which was no 

longer of the stature of mankind, had been 

preparing for a very long time; but It was 

within an ace of being hideously punished. 

It succeeded only by the aid of a part of 

those who formerly swelled the great wave 

which they are to-day resisting by our side, 

as though something in the history of the 

world or the plans of destiny had altered, 

or rather as though we ourselves had at 

last succeeded in altering that something 

and In modifying laws to which until this 

day we were wholly subject. 

But it must not be thought that the con- 

263 



The Wrack of the Storm 

flict will end with the victory. The deep- 
seated forces of earth will not be at once 
disarmed; for a long time to come the in- 
visible war will be waged under the reign 
of peace. If we are not careful, victory 
may even be more disastrous to us than 
defeat. For defeat, Indeed, like previous 
defeats, would have been merely a vic- 
tory postponed. It would have absorbed, 
exhausted, dispersed the enemy, by scatter- 
ing him about the world, whereas our vic- 
tory will bring upon us a twofold peril. It 
will leave the enemy in a state of savage 
isolation in which, thrown back upon him- 
self, cramped, purified by misfortune and 
poverty, he will secretly reinforce his formi- 
dable virtues, while we, for our part, no 
longer held in check by his unbearable but 
salutary menace, will give rein to fallings 
and vices which sooner or later will place us 
at his mercy. Before thinking of peace, 
then, we must make sure of the future and 

264 



The Will of Earth 

render It powerless to injure us. We can- 
not take too many precautions, for we are 
setting ourselves against the manifest de- 
sire of the power that bears us. 

Thfs Is why our efforts are difficult and 
worthy of praise. We are setting our- 
selves — we cannot too often repeat It — 
against the will of earth. Our enemies are 
urged forward by a force that drives us 
back. They are marching with nature, 
whereas we are striving against the great 
current that sweeps the globe. The earth 
has an Idea, which Is no longer ours. She 
remains convinced that man Is an animal In 
all things like other animals. She has not 
yet observed that he Is withdrawing him- 
self from the herd. She does not yet know 
that he has climbed her highest mountain- 
peaks. She has not yet heard tell of just- 
ice, pity, loyalty and honour; she does not 
realize what they are, or confounds them 

with weakness, clumsiness, fear and stu- 

26s 



The Wrack of the Storm 

pidity. She has stopped short at the 
original certitudes which were Indispensa- 
ble to the beginnings of life. She Is lag- 
ging behind us ; and the Interval that divides 
us Is rapidly Increasing. She thinks less 
quickly ; she has not yet had time to under- 
stand us. Moreover, she does not reckon 
as we do ; and for her the centuries are less 
than our years. She Is slow because she is 
almost eternal, while we are prompt be- 
cause we have not many hours before us. 
It may be that one day her thought will 
overtake ours; In the meantime, we have 
to vindicate our advance and to prove to 
ourselves, as we are beginning to do, that 
It is lawful to be In the right as against her, 
that our advance is not fatal and that it 
Is possible to maintain it. 

4 

For It IS becoming difficult to argue that 

earth or nature is always right and that 

266 



The Will of Earth 

those who do not blindly follow earth's Im- 
pulse are necessarily doomed to perish. 
We have learnt to observe her more at- 
tentively and we have won the right to 
judge her. We have discovered that, far 
from being infallible, she is continually 
making mistakes. She gropes and hesi- 
tates. She does not know precisely what 
she wants. She begins by making stupen- 
dous blunders. She first peoples the world 
with uncouth and incoherent monsters, not 
one of which Is capable of living; these all 
disappear. Gradually she acquires, at the 
cost of the life which she creates, an ex- 
perience that is the cruel fruit of the im- 
measurable suffering which she unfeelingly 
inflicts. At last she grows wiser, curbs and 
amends herself, corrects herself, returns 
upon her footsteps, repairs her errors, ex- 
pending her best energies and her highest 
intelligence upon the correction. It Is In- 
contestable that she Is improving her me- 

267 



The Wrack of the Storm 

thods, that she Is more skillful, more pru- 
dent, less extravagant than at the outset. 
And yet the fact remains that, In every 
department of life, in every organism, 
down to our own bodies, there Is a survival 
of bad workmanship, of twofold functions, 
of oversights, changes of intention, ab- 
surdities, useless complications and mean- 
ingless waste. We therefore have no rea- 
son to believe that our enemies are In the 
right because earth Is with them. Earth 
does not possess the truth any more than 
we do. She seeks It, even as we do, and 
discovers It no more readily. She seems 
to know no more than we whither she Is 
going nor whither she Is being led by that 
which leads all things. We m^ust not 
listen to her without enquiry; and we 
need not distress ourselves or despair be- 
cause we are not of her opinion. We 
are not dealing with an infallible and un- 
changeable wisdom, to oppose which In our 

268 



The Will of Earth 

thoughts would be madness. We are act- 
ually proving to her that it is she who is 
in the wrong; that man's reason for exist- 
ence is loftier than that which she provi- 
sionally assigned to him ; that he is already 
outstripping all that she foresaw; and that 
she does wrong to delay his advance. She 
is, for that matter, full of goodwill, is able 
on occasion to recognize her mistakes and 
to obviate their disastrous results and by 
no means takes refuge in majestic and in- 
flexible self-conceit. If we are able to 
persevere, we shall be able to convince her. 
This will take much time, for, I repeat, 
she is slow, though in no wise obsti- 
nate. It will take much time because a 
very long future is in question, a very great 
change and the most important victory that 
man has ever hoped to win. 



269 



FOR POLAND 




XXI 

FOR POLAND 
I 

iHE Allies have entered Into a solemn 
compact that none of them will con- 
clude a separate peace. They undertook 
recently, by an equally Irrevocable conven- 
tion, that they would not lay down their 
arms until Belgium was delivered. These 
two acts, one ot prudence, the other of 
elementary justice, appear at first sight 
superfluous. Yet they were necessary. It 
Is well that nations, even more than men, 
because their conscience Is less stable, 
should secure themselves against the mis- 
takes and weakness and Ingratitude which 
too often accompany strife and which even 
more often follow victory. To-morrow 
they will do for Servia what they have 
done In the case of Belgium; but there Is 

27Z 



The Wrack of the Storm 

a third victim, of whom too little is said, 
who has the same rights as the other two ; 
and to forget her would forever attaint 
the honour and the justice of those who 
took up arms only in the name of justice 
and honour. 

2 

I need not recall the fate of Poland. It 
IS in certain respects more tragic and more 
pitiful than that of Belgium or of Servia. 
She had not even the opportunity to choose 
between dishonour and annihilation. 

Three successive acts of injustice, which 
were, until to-day, the most shameful re- 
corded by history, deprived her of the 
glory of that heroic choice which she would 
have made in the same spirit, for she had 
already thrice made it in the past, a choice 
which this day sustains and consoles her 
two martyred sisters in their profoundest 
tribulations. It would be too unjust if an 
ancient injustice, which even yet weighs 

274 



For Poland 

upon the memory and the conscience of 
Europe, should become the sole reason of 
yet a last iniquity, which this time would 
be inexpiable. 

3 

True, the Grand-duke Nicolas made 

noble and generous promises to Poland; 
and these promises were repeated at the 
opening of the Duma. This is good and 
shows the irresistible force of the awaken- 
ing conscience of a great empire; but it Is 
not enough. Such promises Involve only 
those who make them; they do not bind a 
nation. We will not insult Russia by 
doubting her intentions; but among all the 
certainties which history teaches us there 
is one that has been acquired once and for 
all; and this is that in politics and inter- 
national morality Intentions count for no- 
thing and that a promise, made by no mat- 
ter what nations, will be kept only If those 
who make It also render it impossible for 

275 



The Wrack of the Storm 

themselves to do otherwise than keep it. 
For the rest, the question at present is not 
one of intentions, nor confidence, nor pity, 
nor even of interest. Others have spoken 
and will speak again, better than I could, 
of Poland's terrible distress and of the dan- 
ger, which is far more formidable and far 
more imminent than is generally believed, 
of those German intrigues which are seek- 
ing to seduce from us and, despite them- 
selves, to turn against us twenty millions 
of desperate people and nearly a million 
soldiers, who will die, perhaps, rather than 
join our enemies, -but who, in any case, can- 
not fight in our ranks as they would have 
done had the word for which they are 
waiting in their anguish been spoken be- 
fore It was too late. 

4 
But, however grave the peril, we are, I 
repeat, far less concerned with this at the 

276 



For Poland 

present moment than with the question of 
justice. Poland has an absolute and sacred 
right to be treated even as the other two 
victims of this war of justice. She Is their 
equal, she Is of the same rank and on the 
same level. She has suffered what they 
have suffered, for the same cause. In the 
same spirit and with the same heroism ; and 
if she has not done what the two others 
have done it Is because only the Ingratitude 
of all those whom she had more than once 
saved, together with one of the greatest 
crimes In history, prevented her from doing 
so. 

It Is time for the Europe of to-day to 
repair the iniquity committed by the Eu- 
rope of other days. We are nothing, we 
are no better than our enemies, we have no 
title to deliver millions of Innocent men to 
death, unless we stand for justice. The 
Idea of justice alone must rule all that we 
undertake, for we are united, we have risen 

277 



The Wrack of the Storm 

and we exist only In Its name. At this 
moment we occupy all the pinnacles of this 
justice, to which we have brought such an 
impulse, such sacrifices and such heroism as 
we shall perhaps never behold again. We 
shall never rise higher; let us then form 
at this present time resolutions which will 
forbid us to descend; and Europe would 
descend, to a depth greater than was hers 
in the unpardonable hour of the partition 
of Poland, did she not before all else re- 
pair the immense fault which she committed 
when she had not yet discovered her con- 
science and did not yet know what she 
knows to-day. 



278 



THE MIGHT OF THE DEAD 



XXII 

THE MIGHT OF THE DEAD 
I. 

IN A Beleaguered City, a little book 
which, in Its curious way, is a master- 
piece, Mrs. Oliphant shows us the dead of 
a provincial town suddenly waxing indig- 
nant over the conduct and the morals of 
those inhabiting the town which they had 
founded. They rise up in rebellion, invest 
the houses, the streets, the market-places 
and, by the pressure of their innumerable 
multitude, all-powerful though invisible, 
repulse the living, thrust them out of doors 
and, setting a strict watch, permit them to 
return to their roof-trees only after a treaty 
of peace and penitence has purified their 

281 



The Wrack of the Storm 

hearts, atoned for their offences and en- 
sured a more worthy future. 

There is undoubtedly a great truth 
beneath this fiction, which appears too far- 
fetched because we perceive only material 
and ephemeral realities. The dead live 
and move in our midst far more really and 
effectually than the most venturesome 
Imagination could depict. It is very doubt- 
ful whether they remain in their graves. 
It even seems increasingly certain that they 
never allowed themselves to be confined 
there. Under the tombstones where we 
believe them to lie imprisoned there are 
only a few ashes, which are no longer 
theirs, which they have abandoned without 
regret and which, in all probability, they 
no longer deign to remember. All that 
was themselves continues to have its being 
in our midst. How and under what aspect? 
After all these thousands, perhaps millions, 

of years, we do not yet know; and no 

282 



The Might of the Dead 

religion has been able to tell us with satis- 
fying certainty, though all have striven to 
do so; but we may, by means of certain 
tokens, hope to learn. 

Without further considering a mighty 
but obscure truth, which it Is for the 
moment Impossible to state precisely or to 
render palpable, let us concern ourselves 
with one which cannot be disputed. As I 
have said elsewhere, whatever our religious 
faith may be, there is In any case one place 
where our dead cannot perish, where they 
continue to exist as really as when they 
were In the flesh and often more actively; 
and this living abiding-place, this conse- 
crated spot, which for those whom we have 
lost becomes heaven or hell according as 
we draw close to or depart from their 
thoughts and their desires, Is In us. 

And their thoughts and their desires are 
always higher than our own. It is, there- 
fore, by uplifting ourselves that we 

283 



The Wrack of the Storm 

approach them. It Is we who must take 
the first steps, for they can no longer 
descend, whereas it is always possible for 
us to rise ; for the dead, whatever they have 
been in life, become better than the best of 
us. The least worthy of them, in shedding 
the body, have shed its vices, its littlenesses, 
its weaknesses, which soon pass from our 
memory as well; and the spirit alone 
remains, which is pure in every man and 
able to desire only what is good. There 
are no wicked dead because there are no 
wicked souls. This is why, as we purify 
ourselves, we restore life to those who were 
no more and transform our memory, which 
they inhabit, into heaven. 

2. 

And what was always true of all the 
dead Is far more true to-day when only the 
best are chosen for the tomb. In the region 
which we believe to be under the earth, 

284 



The Might of the Dead 

which we call the kingdom of the shades 
and which in reality is the ethereal region 
and the kingdom of light, there are at this 
moment perturbations no less profound 
than those which we are experiencing on 
the surface of our earth. The young dead 
are invading it from every side; and since 
the beginning of this world they have never 
been so numerous, so full of energy and 
zeal. Whereas in the customary sequence 
of the years the dwelling-place of those 
who leave us receives only weary and 
exhausted lives, there is not one in this 
incomparable host who, to borrow Pericles' 
expression, "has not departed from life at 
the height of glory." Not one of them 
but has gone up, not down, to his death 
clad in the greatest sacrifice that man can 
make for an idea which cannot die. All 
that we have hitherto believed, all that we 
have striven to attain beyond ourselves, all 
that has lifted us to the level at which we 

285 



The Wrack of the Storm 

stand, all that has overcome the evil days 
and the evil instincts of human nature : all 
this could have been no more than lies and 
illusions if such men as these, such a mass 
of merit and of glory, were really 
annihilated, had really forever disappeared, 
were forever useless and voiceless, forever 
without influence in a world to which they 
have given life. 

3- 

It is hardly possible that this could be 
so as regards the external survival of the 
dead; but it is absolutely certain that it is 
not so as regards their survival in ourselves. 
Here nothing is lost and no one perishes. 
Our memories are to-day peopled by a 
multitude of heroes struck down in the 
flower of their youth and very different 
from the pale and languid cohort of the 
past, composed almost wholly of the sick 
and the aged, who already had ceased to 

286 



The Might of the Dead 

exist before leaving the earth. We must 
tell ourselves that now, in each of our 
homes, both In our cities and In the country- 
side, both In the palace and In the meanest 
hovel, there lives and reigns a young dead 
man In the glory of his strength. He fills 
the poorest, darkest dwelling with a splen- 
dour of which It had never ventured to 
dream. His constant presence. Imperious 
and Inevitable, diffuses through It and 
maintains a religion and Ideas which It had 
never known there before, hallows every- 
thing around It, forces the eyes to look 
higher and the spirit to refrain from 
descending, purifies the air that Is breathed 
and the speech that Is held and the thoughts 
that are mustered there and, little by little, 
ennobles and uplifts a whole people on a 
scale of unexampled vastness. 



Such dead as these have a power as 

287 



The Wrack of the Storm 

profound, as fruitful as life and less 
precarious. It is terrible that this experi- 
ence should have been made, for it is the 
most pitiless and the first in such enormous 
masses that mankind has ever undergone; 
but, now that the ordeal is almost over, we 
shall soon derive from it the most un- 
expected fruits. It will not be long before 
we see the differences increase and the 
destinies diverge between the nations which 
have acquired all these dead and all this 
glory and those which were deprived of 
them; and we shall perceive with amaze- 
ment that those nations which have lost the 
most are those which have kept their riches 
and their men. There are losses which are 
inestimable gains; and there are gains 
whereby the future is lost. There are dead 
whom the living cannot replace and the 
mere thought of whom accomplishes things 
which their bodies could not perform. 

There are dead whose energy surpasses 

288 



The Might of the Dead 

death and recovers life ; and we are almost 
every one of us at this moment the man- 
dataries of a being greater, nobler, graver, 
wiser and more truly living than ourselves. 
With all those who accompany him, he will 
be our judge, if it is the fact that the dead 
weigh the soul of the living and that on 
their verdict our happiness depends. He 
will be our guide and our protector, for it 
is the first time, since history has revealed 
Its misfortunes to us, that man has felt so 
great a host of such mighty dead soaring 
above his head and speaking within his 
heart. 

5- 

We shall live henceforward under their 
laws, which will be more just but not more 
severe nor more cheerless than ours ; for it 
is a mistake to suppose that the dead love 
nothing but gloom; they love only the 
justice and the truth which are the eternal 

289 



The Wrack of the Storm 

forms of happiness. From the depths of 
this justice and this truth in which they are 
all immersed, they will help us to destroy 
the great falsehoods of existence: for war 
and death, if they sow innumerable miseries 
and misfortunes, have at least the merit of 
destroying as many lies as they occasion 
evils. And all the sacrifices which they 
have made for us will have been in vain — 
and this is not possible — if they do not 
first of all bring about the fall of the lies 
on which we live and which It Is not 
necessary to name, for each of us knows his 
own and is ashamed of them and will be 
eager to make an end of them. They will 
teach us, before all else, from the depths of 
our hearts which are their living tombs, to 
love those who outlive them, since It is in 
them alone that they wholly exist. 



290 



WHEN THE WAR IS OVER 



XXIII 

WHEN THE WAR IS OVER 
I 

BEFORE closing this book, I wish to 
weigh for the last time in my con- 
science the words of hatred and maledic- 
tion which it has made me speak in spite 
of myself. We have to do with the 
strangest of enemies. He has knowingly 
and deliberately, while in the full possess- 
ion of his faculties and without necessity 
or excuse, revived all the crimes which we 
supposed to be forever buried in the bar- 
barous past. He has trampled under foot 
all the precepts which man had so pain- 
fully won from the cruel darkness of his 
beginnings ; he has violated all the laws of 
justice, humanity, loyalty and honour, from 
the highest, which are almost godlike, to 
the simplest, the most elementary, which 

293 



The Wrack of the Strom 

still belong to the lower worlds. There 
is no longer any doubt on this point : it has 
been proved over and over again until we 
have attained a final certitude. 

But on the other hand, it is no less cert- 
ain that he has displayed virtues which it 
would be unworthy of us to deny; for w^e 
honour ourselves in recognizing the valour 
of those whom we are fighting. He has 
gone to his death in deep, compact, disci- 
plined masses, with a blind, hopeless, ob- 
stinate heroism of which no such lurid 
example had ever yet been known, a heroism 
which has many times compelled our ad- 
miration and our pity. He has known how 
to sacrifice himself, with unprecedented 
and perhaps unequalled abnegation, to an 
idea which we know to be false, inhuman 
and even somewhat mean, but which he 
believes to be just and lofty; and a sacri- 
fice of this kind, whatever its object, is 
always the proof of a force which survives 

294 



When the War Is over 

those who devote themselves to making it 
and must command respect. 

I know very well that this heroism is not 
like the heroism which we love. For us, 
heroism must before all be voluntary, freed 
from any constraint, active, ardent, eager 
and spontaneous ; whereas with them it has 
mingled with it a great deal of servility, 
passiveness, sadness, gloomy, ignorant, 
massive submission and rather base fears. 
It is nevertheless the fact that, in the mo- 
ment of supreme peril, little remains of all 
these distinctions and that no force in the 
world can drive to its death a people which 
does not bear within itself the strength to 
confront it. Our soldiers make no mis- 
take upon this point. Question the men 
returning from the trenches : they detest 
the enemy, they abhor the aggressor, the 
unjust and arrogant aggressor, uncouth, 
too often cruel and treacherous; but they 
do not hate the man: they do him justice; 

295 



The Wrack of the Storm 

they pity him; and, after the battle, in the 
defenceless wounded soldier or disarmed 
prisoner they recognize, with astonishment, 
a brother in misfortune who, like them- 
selves, is submitting to duties and laws 
which, like themselves, he too believes lofty 
and necessary. Under the insufferable 
enemy they see an unhappy man who also 
is bearing the burden of life. They for- 
get the things that divide them to recall 
only those which unite them in a common 
destiny; and they teach us a great lesson. 

Better than ourselves, who are removed 
from danger, at the contact of profound and 
fearful verities and realities they are al- 
ready beginning to discern something that 
we cannot yet perceive; and their obscure 
instinct is probably anticipating the judg- 
ment of history and our own judgment, 
when we see more clearly. Let us learn 
from them to be just and to distinguish 

that which we are bound to despise and 

296 



When the War Is over 

loathe from that which we may pity, love 
and respect. 

Setting aside the unpardonable aggres- 
sion and the inexpiable violation of treaties, 
this war, despite its insanity, has come near 
to being a bloody but magnificent proof of 
greatness, heroism and the spirit of sacri- 
fice. Humanity was ready to rise above 
itself, to surpass all that it had hitherto 
accomplished. It has surpassed it. Never 
before had nations been seen capable, for 
months on end, perhaps for years, of re- 
nouncing their repose, their security, their 
wealth, their comfort, all that they pos- 
sessed and loved down to their very life, 
in order to accomplish what they believed 
to be their duty. Never before had nations 
been seen that were able as a whole to un- 
derstand and admit that the happiness of 
each of those who live in this time of trial 
is of no consequence compared with the 

honour of those who live no more or the 

297 



The Wrack of the Storm 

happiness of those who are not yet alive. 
We stand on heights that had not been 
attained before. And If, on the enemies' 
side, this unexampled renunciation had not 
been poisoned at Its source; If the war 
which they are waging against us had been 
as fine, as loyal, as generous, as chivalrous 
as that which we are waging against them, 
we may well believe that It would have 
been the last and that it would have ended, 
not In battle, but, like the awakening from 
an evil dream. In a noble and fraternal 
amazement. They have made that Impos- 
sible ; and this, we may be sure. Is the dis- 
appointment which the future will find It 
most difficult to forgive them. 

2 

What are we to do now ? Must we hate 
the enemy to the end of time ? The burden 
of hatred Is the heaviest that man can bear 
upon this earth ; and we should faint under 

298 



When the War is Over 

the weight of It. On the other hand, we 
do not wish once more to be the dupes and 
victims of confidence and love. Here 
again our soldiers, In their simplicity, 
which Is so clear-seeing and so close to the 
truth, anticipate the future and teach us 
what to admit and what to avoid. We 
have seen that they do not hate the man; 
but they do not trust him at all. They 
discover the human being in him only when 
he is unarmed. They know, from bitter 
experience, that, so long as he possesses 
weapons, he cannot resist the frenzy of de- 
struction, treachery and slaughter ; and that 
he does not become kindly until he Is ren- 
dered powerless. 

Is he thus by nature, or has he been 
perverted by those who lead him? Have 
the rulers dragged the whole nation after 
them, or has the whole nation driven its 
rulers on ? Did the rulers make the nation 

like unto themselves, or did the nation 

299 



The Wrack of the Storm 

select and support them because they re- 
sembled itself? Did the evil come from 
above or below, or was it everywhere? 
Here we have the great and obscure point 
of this terrible adventure. It is not easy 
to throw light upon it and still less easy 
to find excuses for it. If our enemies prove 
that they were deceived and corrupted by 
their masters, they prove, at the same time, 
that they are less intelligent, less firmly at- 
tached to justice, honour and humanity, 
less civilized, in a word, than those whom 
they claimed the right to enslave in the 
name of a superiority which they them- 
selves have proved not to exist ; and, unless 
they can establish that their errors, per- 
fidies and cruelties, which can no longer be 
denied, should be imputed only to those 
masters, then they themselves must bear 
the pitiless weight. I do not know how 
they will escape from this predicament, nor 
what the future will decide, that future 



When the War is Over 

which Is wiser than the past, even as, in the 
words of an old Slav proverb, the dawn is 
wiser than the eve. In the meanwhile, let 
us copy the prudence of our soldiers, who 
know what to believe far better than we do. 



301 



THE MASSACRE 
OF THE INNOCENTS 



XXIV 

THE MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS 

The Massacre of the Innocents appeared for the 
first time in 1886, in a little periodical called La Plei- 
ade which some friends and I had founded in the 
Latin Quarter and which died of inanition after its 
sixth number. My reason for making room in the 
present volume for these pages marking a very modest 
start — they were the first that found their way into 
print — is not that I am under any delusion as to the 
merits of this youthful work, in which I had simply 
aimed at reproducing as best I could the different 
episodes of a picture in the Brussels Museum, painted 
in the sixteenth century by Pieter Breughel the Elder. 
But it appeared to me that circumstances had made 
of this humble literary effort a sort of prophetic vision; 
for it is but too likely that similar scenes must have 
been repeated in more than one of our unhappy Flem- 
ish or Brabant villages and that to describe them as 
they were lately enacted we should have only to change 
the name of the butchers and probably, alas, to accent- 
uate their cruelty, their injustice and their hideous- 
ness! — M, M. 

IT WAS close upon supper-time, that 
Friday the twenty-sixth day of the 
month of December, when a little shep- 
herd-lad came Into Nazareth, sobbing bit- 
terly. 

Some peasants drinking ale In the Blue 
30s 



The Wrack of the Storm 

Lion opened the shutters to look into the 
village orchard and observed the child run- 
ning over the snow. They saw that he was 
Korneliz' boy and cried from the window : 

"What's the matter? Get home with 
you to bed !" 

But he replied in terror that the Span- 
iards were come, that they had set fire to 
the farm, hanged his mother among the 
walnut-trees and bound his nine little sis- 
ters to the trunk of a big tree. 

The peasants rushed out of the inn, 
gathered round the child and plied him 
with questions. Then he also told them 
that the soldiers were on horseback and 
wore mail, that they had driven away the 
cattle of his uncle Petrus Krayer and that 
they would soon be entering the forest with 
the cows and sheep. 

All ran to the Golden Sun, where Korne- 
liz and his brother-in-law were also drink- 
ing their pot of ale; and the inn-keeper 

306 



The Massacre of the Innocents 

sped Into the village, shouting that the 
Spaniards were at hand. 

Then there was a great din in Nazareth. 
The women opened the windows and the 
peasants left their houses with lights which 
they put out as soon as they reached the 
orchard, where it was bright as midday, 
because of the snow and the full moon. 

They crowded round Korneliz and 
Krayer in the market-place, in front of the 
two inns. Several had brought their 
pitchforks and their rakes and consulted 
one another, terror-stricken, under the 
trees. 

But, as they knew not what to do, one 
of them went to fetch the parish-priest, 
who owned Korneliz' farm. He came out 
of his house with the sacristan, bringing 
the keys of the church. All followed him 
into the churchyard; and he shouted to 
them from the top of the tower that he 
could see nothing in the fields nor in the 

307 



The Wrack of the Storm 

forest, but that there were red clouds in 
the neighbourhood of his farm, though the 
sky was blue and full of stars over all 
the rest of the country. 

After deliberating for a long time in the 
churchyard, they decided to hide in the 
wood through which the Spaniards would 
have to pass and to attack them If they 
were not too many, so as to recover Petrus 
Krayer's cattle and the plunder which they 
had taken from the farm. 

They armed themselves with pitchforks 
and spades; and the women remained near 
the church with the priest. 

Seeking a suitable spot for their ambus- 
cade, they came to a mill on the skirt of 
the forest and saw the farm burning amid 
the starlight. Here, under some huge 
oaks. In front of a frozen pool, they took 
up their position. 

A shepherd whom they called the Red 

Dwarf went up the hill to warn the miller, 

30S 



The Massacre of the Innocents 

who had stopped his mill when he saw 
the flames on the horizon. He invited the 
fellow in, however; and the two of them 
placed themselves at a window to watch 
the distance. 

In front of them the moon was shining 
over the burning farm ; and they saw a long 
host marching over the snow. When they 
had taken stock of it, the Dwarf went down 
to those in the forest; and presently they 
descried four horsemen above a herd of 
animals that seemed to be cropping the 
grass. 

As the men, in their blue hose and their 
red cloaks, were looking around them on 
the edge of the pool and under the snow-lit 
trees, the sacristan pointed to a box-hedge ; 
and they went and hid behind it. 

The cattle and the Spaniards came over 
the ice; and the sheep on reaching the 
hedge were already beginning to nibble at 
the leaves, when Korneliz broke through 

309 



The Wrack of the Storm 

the bushes; and the others followed with 
their pitchforks into the light. Then there 
was a great slaughter on the pond, while 
the huddled sheep and the cows gazed at 
the battle in their midst and at the moon 
above them. 

When the men and the horses had been 
killed, Korneliz ran into the meadows 
towards the flames ; and the others stripped 
the dead. Then they went back to the vil- 
lage with the herds. The women watch- 
ing the gloomy forest from behind the 
walls of the churchyard saw them ap- 
proaching through the trees and, with the 
priest, hurried to meet them; and they re- 
turned dancing gleefully all amongst the 
children and the dogs. 

While they made merry under the pear- 
trees In the orchard, where the Red Dwarf 
hung up lanterns as a sign of kermis, they 
consulted the priest as to what they were 

to do. 

310 



The Massacre of the Innocents 

They at last resolved to put a horse to 
a cart and fetch the bodies of the woman 
and her nine little daughters to the village. 
The dead woman's sisters and the other 
peasant-women of her family climbed into 
it, as did the priest, who was not well able 
to walk, being advanced in years and very 
stout. 

They entered the forest once more and 
arrived in silence at the dazzling white 
plain, where they saw the naked men and 
the horses lying on their backs upon the 
gleaming ice among the trees. Then they 
went on to the farm, which they could see 
burning in the distance. 

When they came to the orchard and to 
the house all red with flames, they stopped 
at the gate to mark the great misfortune 
that had befallen the farmer in his garden. 
His wife was hanging all naked from the 
branches of a great walnut-tree; he himself 
was mounting a ladder to climb the tree, 

3" 



The Wrack of the Storm 

around which the nine little girls were 
waiting for their mother on the grass. Al- 
ready he was walking among the huge 
boughs, when suddenly he saw the crowd, 
black against the snow, watching him. 
Weeping, he made signs to them to help 
him ; and they went into the garden. Then 
the sacristan, the Red Dwarf, the landlord 
of the Blue Lion and he of the Golden Sun, 
the parish-priest, with a lantern, and many 
other peasants climbed into the snow-laden 
walnut-tree to cut down the corpse, which 
the women of the village received in their 
arms at the foot of the tree, even as at the 
descent from the Cross of Our Lord Jesus 
Christ. 

The next day they buried her; and 
nothing else out of the common happened 
at Nazareth that week. But, on the fol- 
lowing Sunday, hungry wolves ran through 
the village after high mass and it snowed 
until noon; then the sun suddenly shone in 

312 



The Massacre of the Innocents 

the sky ; and the peasants went in to dinner, 
as was their wont, and dressed for benedic- 
tion. 

At that moment there was no one in the 
market-place, for it was freezing cruelly. 
Only the dogs and hens remained under the 
trees, where some sheep were nibbling at 
a three-cornered patch of grass, while the 
priest's maid-servant swept away the snow 
from the presbytery-garden. 

Then a troop of armed men crossed the 
stone bridge at the end of the village and 
halted in the orchard. Some peasants 
came out of their houses; but, on recogni- 
zing the Spaniards, they retreated In terror 
and went to their windows to see what 
would happen. 

There were some thirty horsemen, clad 
In armour, around an old man with a white 
beard. Behind them they carried red and 
yellow foot-soldiers, who jumped down and 
ran over the snow to shake off their stiff- 

313 



The Wrack of the Storm 

ness, while several of the men in armour 
also alighted and eased themselves against 
the trees to which they had fastened their 
horses. 

Then they turned to the Golden Sun and 
knocked at the door. It was opened hesi- 
tatingly; and they warmed themselves at 
the fire and called for ale. 

Next they came out of the inn, carrying 
pots and jugs and wheaten loaves for their 
comrades, who sat ranked around the man 
with the white beard, waiting in the midst 
of the lances. 

As the street was empty, the commander 
sent horsemen to the back of the houses, to 
guard the village on its open side, and or- 
dered the foot-soldiers to bring to him all 
the children of two years old and under, to 
be massacred, as is written in the Gospel 
according to St. Matthew. 

The soldiers went first to the inn of the 
Green Cabbage and to the barber's cottage, 

314 



The Massacre of the Innocents 

which stood side by side, midway in the 
street. 

One of them opened a stable-door; and a 
litter of pigs escaped and scattered over 
the village. The inn-keeper and the bar- 
ber came out and humbly asked the sold- 
iers what they wanted; but the men knew 
no Flemish and went in to look for the 
children. 

The inn-keeper had one, which sat crying 
in Its little shirt on the table where they 
had just had dinner. A man took the child 
In his arms and carried it away under the 
apple-tree, while the father and mother fol- 
lowed him with cries of lamentation. 

The soldiers also threw open the cooper's 
shed and the blacksmith's and the cob- 
bler's; and the calves, cows, asses, pigs, 
goats and sheep strayed about the market- 
place. When the men broke the glass of 
the carpenter's windows, several of the 
peasants, Including the oldest and richest 

315 



The Wrack of the Storm 

farmers in the parish, assembled in the 
street and went towards the Spaniards. 
They doffed their hats and caps respect- 
fully to the leader In his velvet cloak and 
asked him what he was going to do; but 
even he did not understand their language ; 
and some one went to fetch the priest. 

He was making ready for benediction 
and putting on a gold cope in the sacristy. 
The peasant called out : 

*'The Spaniards are In the orchard!" 

Horrified, the priest ran to the church- 
door, accompanied by the serving-boys 
carrying tapers and censer. 

Then he saw the animals released from 
their sheds roaming on the snow and the 
grass, the horsemen In the village, the sold- 
iers outside the doors, the horses tied to 
the trees along the street and the men and 
women entreating him who was holding 
the child In Its shirt. 

He rushed to the churchyard; and the 
316 



The Massacre of the Innocents 

peasants turned anxiously to their priest, 
coming through the pear-trees like a god 
robed in gold, and stood around him and 
the man with the white beard. 

He spoke In Flemish and Latin ; but the 
commander shrugged his shoulders slowly 
up and down to show that he did not un- 
derstand. 

His parishioners asked him under their 
breath : 

"What does he say? What is he going 
to do?" 

Others, on seeing the priest in the or- 
chard, came timidly from their farms; the 
women hurried up and stood whispering 
among the groups ; while some soldiers who 
were besieging an inn ran back at the sight 
of the great crowd that was forming in 
the market-place. 

Then the man who was holding by one 
leg the child of the landlord of the Green 
Cabbage cut off its head with his sword. 

317 



The Wrack of the Storm 

The head fell before their eyes and the 
body fell after it and lay bleeding on the 
grass. The mother picked it up and car- 
ried it away, leaving the head behind her. 
She ran towards the house, but stumbled 
against a tree and fell flat on the snow, 
where she lay in a swoon, while the father 
struggled between two soldiers. 

Some of the younger peasants threw 
stones and blocks of wood at the Spaniards, 
but the horsemen all lowered their lances 
together, the women fled and the priest 
began to cry out in horror with his parish- 
ioners, all among the sheep, the geese and 
the dogs. 

However, as the soldiers were once more 
moving down the street, the folk stood si- 
lent to see what they would do. 

The band entered the shop kept by the 
sacristan's sisters and then came out quietly, 
without harming the seven women, who 
knelt on the doorstep praying. 

318 



The Massacre of the Innocents 

Next they went to the Inn owned by the 
Hunchback of St. Nicholas. Here also 
the door was opened directly, to appease 
them; but they reappeared amid a great 
outcry, with three children In their arms 
and surrounded by the Hunchback, his wife 
and his daughters, clasping their hands In 
token of entreaty. 

On reaching the old man, the soldiers 
put down the children at the foot of an elm, 
where they remained, sitting on the snow 
In their Sunday clothes. But one of them, 
who wore a yellow frock, rose and toddled 
towards the sheep. A man ran after It 
with his naked sword; and the child died 
with Its face In the grass, while the others 
were killed not far from the tree. 

All the peasants and the Inn-keeper's 
daughters took to flight, shrieking as they 
went, and returned to their homes. The 
priest, left alone In the orchard, besought 
the Spaniards with loud cries, going on his 

319 



The Wrack of the Storm 

knees from horse to horse, with his arms 
crossed upon his breast, while the father 
and mother, sitting in the snow, wept 
piteously for the dead children that lay In 
their laps. 

As the soldiers ran along the street, they 
remarked a big blue farm-house. They 
tried to break down the door, but it was 
of oak and studded with nails. Then they 
took some tubs that were frozen in a pool 
in front of the house and used them to 
climb to the upper windows, through which 
they made their way. 

There had been a kermis at this farm; 
and kinsfolk had come to eat waffles, ham 
and custards with their family. At the 
sound of the broken panes, they had as- 
sembled behind the table covered with jugs 
and dishes. The soldiers entered the 
kitchen and, after a desperate struggle, 
in which many were wounded, they seized 
the little boys and girls, as well as the hind, 

320 



The Massacre of the Innocents 

who had bitten a soldier's thumb. Then 
they left the house, locking the door behind 
them to prevent the Inmates from going 
with them. 

Those of the villagers who had no child- 
ren slowly left their homes and followed 
them from afar. When the soldiers carry- 
ing their victims came to the old man, they 
threw them on the grass and deliberately 
killed them with their spears and their 
swords, while all along the front of the 
blue house the men and women leant out 
of the windows of the upper floor and the 
loft, cursing and rocking wildly in the sun- 
shine at the sight of the red, pink and white 
frocks of their little ones lying motionless 
on the grass among the trees. Then the 
soldiers hanged the hind from the sign of 
the Half Moon on the other side of the 
street; and there was a long silence in the 
village. 

The massacre now began to spread. 
321 



The Wrack of the Storm 

Mothers ran out of the houses and tried 
to escape to the open country through the 
gardens and kitchen-plots; but the horse- 
men scoured after them and drove them 
back into the street. Peasants, holding 
their caps In their clasped hands, followed 
upon their knees the men who were drag- 
ging away their children, among the dogs 
which barked deliriously amid the din. 
The priest, with his arms raised aloft, ran 
along the houses and under the trees, pray- 
ing desperately, like a martyr; and soldiers, 
shivering with cold, blew on their fingers 
as they moved about the road, or, with 
their hands in the pockets of their trunks 
and their swords tucked under their arms, 
waited beneath the windows of the houses 
that were being scaled. 

On seeing the grief-stricken terror of the 
peasants, they entered the farm-houses in 
little bands; and in like fashion they acted 

throughout the length of the street. 

322 



The Massacre of the Innocents 

A woman who sold vegetables In the old 
red-brick cottage near the church seized a 
chair and ran after two men who were 
carrying off her children In a wheel-barrow. 
When she saw them die, a sickness over- 
came her; and she suffered the folk to press 
her into the chair, against a tree by the 
road-side. 

Other soldiers climbed up the lime-trees 
in front of a house painted lilac and re- 
moved the tiles In order to enter the house. 
When they came out again upon the roof, 
the father and mother, with outstretched 
arms, also appeared In the opening; and 
they pushed them down repeatedly, cutting 
them over the head with their swords, be- 
fore they could descend into the street. 

One family, which had locked itself into 
the cellar of a rambling cottage, cried 
through the grating, where the father stood 
madly brandishing a pitchfork. An old, 
bald-headed man was sobbing all alone on 

323 



The Wrack of the Storm 

a dung-heap ; a woman in yellow had faint- 
ed in the market-place and her husband 
was holding her under her arms and 
moaning in the shadow of a pear-tree; an- 
other, in red, was kissing her little girl, 
who had lost her hands, and lifting first 
one arm and then the other to see if she 
would not move. Yet another ran into the 
country and the soldiers pursued her 
through the hayricks that bounded the 
snow-clad fields. 

Beneath the inn of the Four Sons of Ay- 
mon there was a tumult as of a siege. The 
inhabitants had barred the door; and the 
soldiers went round and round the house 
without being able to make their way in. 
They were trying to clamber up to the sign 
by the fruit-trees against the front wall, 
when they caught sight of a ladder behind 
the garden-door. They set it against the 
wall and mounted one after the other. 
Thereupon the landlord and all his house- 

324 



The Massacre of the Innocents 

hold hurled tables, chairs, dishes and cra- 
dles at them from the windows. The lad- 
der upset and the soldiers fell down. 

In a wooden hut, at the end of the vil- 
lage, another band found a peasant-woman 
bathing her children In a tub by the fire. 
Being old and almost deaf, she did not 
hear them come In. Two soldiers took the 
tub and carried It off; and the dazed woman 
went after them, with the children's 
clothes, wanting to dress them. But, when 
she came to the door and suddenly saw 
the splashes of blood In the village, the 
swords In the orchard, the cradles over- 
turned In the street, women on their knees 
and women waving their arms around the 
dead, she began to cry out with all her 
strength and to strike the soldiers, who put 
down the tub to defend themselves. The 
priest also came hastening up and, folding 
his hands across his vestment, entreated 
the Spaniards before the naked children, 

325 



The Wrack of the Storm 

« 
who were whimpering in the water. Other 

soldiers then came up and pushed him aside 

and bound the raving peasant-woman to 

a tree. 

The butcher had hidden his little daugh- 
ter and, leaning against his house, looked 
on in unconcern. A foot-soldier and one 
of the men in armour went in and discover- 
ed the child in a copper cauldron. Then the 
butcher, in desperation, took one of his 
knives and chased them down the street; 
but a band that was passing struck the 
knife from his grasp and hanged him by the 
hands to the hooks in his wall, among the 
flayed carcases, where he twitched his legs 
and jerked his head and cursed and swore 
till evening. 

Near the churchyard, a crowd had as- 
sembled outside a long green farm-house. 
The farmer stood on his threshold weeping 
bitter tears; as he was very fat, with a 
face made for smiling, the hearts of the 

326 



The Massacre of the Innocents 

soldiers softened in some measure as they 
sat in the sun with their backs to the wall, 
listening to him and patting his dog the 
while. But the one who was dragging the 
child away by the hand made gestures as 
though to say : 

"You may save your tears ! It is not my 
fault! 

A peasant who was being hotly pursued 
sprang into a boat moored to the stone 
bridge and pushed across the pond with his 
wife and children. The soldiers, not dar- 
ing to venture on the ice, strode angrily 
through the reeds. They climbed into the 
willows on the bank, trying to reach them 
with their spears; and, when they failed, 
continued for a long time to threaten the 
family, where they all sat cowering in the 
middle of the water. 

Meanwhile, the orchard was still full of 
people, for it was there that most of the 
children were slain, in front of the man with 



The Wrack of the Storm 

the white beard who directed the massacre. 
The httle bays and girls who were big 
enough to walk alone also collected 
there and, munching their bread-and-butter, 
stood looking on curiously to see the others 
die or gathered round the village idiot, 
who lay upon the grass playing a whistle. 

Then suddenly a movement ran through 
the length of the village. The peasants 
were turning their steps toward the castle, 
standing on a high mound of yellow earth 
at the end of the street. They had caught 
sight of the lord of the village leaning on 
the battlements of his tower, watching the 
massacre. And the men, women and old 
folk stretched out their arms to him where 
he sat In his cloak of purple velvet and 
cap of gold and entreated him as though 
he were a king in heaven. But he threw 
up his arms and shrugged his shoulders, to 
show his helplessness; and, when they im- 
plored him In ever-increasing anguish and 

328 



The Massacre of the Innocents 

knelt bareheaded In the snow, uttering loud 
cries, he turned back slowly Into the tower; 
and In the hearts of the peasants all hope 
died. 

When all the children were killed, the 
tired soldiers wiped their swords on the 
grass and supped under the pear-trees. 
Then the foot-soldiers mounted behind the 
others and they all rode out of Nazareth 
together, by the stone bridge, as they had 
come. 

The setting sun lit the forest with a red 
light and painted the village a new colour. 
Weary with running and entreating, the 
priest had sat down In the snow In front 
of the church; and his servant-maid stood 
near him, looking around. They saw the 
street and the orchard filled with peasants 
In their holiday attire, moving about the 
market-place and along the houses. Out- 
side the doors, families, with their dead 
children on their knees, whispered In amaze- 

329 



The Wrack of the Storm 

ment and horror of the fate wherewith 
they had been assailed. Others were still 
mourning the child where it had fallen, near 
a cask, under a barrow or at a puddle's 
edge, or were carrying it away in silence. 
Several were already washing the benches, 
chairs, tables and shirts all smirched with 
blood and picking up the cradles that had 
been flung into the street. But nearly all 
the mothers were kneeling on the grass 
under the trees, before the dead bodies, 
which they knew by their woollen frocks. 
Those who had no children were roaming 
about the market-place, stopping to gaze 
at the afflicted groups. The men who had 
done weeping took the dogs and started in 
pursuit of their strayed beasts, or mended 
their broken windows or gaping roofs, 
while the village grew hushed and still be- 
neath the light of the moon as it rose slowly 
in the sky. ' |/i<jv ^-.'^i / 



THE END 
330 



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person to whom the book is charged. 

Fine for over detention, two cents a day (Sunday 
ex;cluded). 

Books will be issued and received from 9 a. m. 
to 9. p. m. (Sundays, July 4, December 25, excepted). 

KEEP YOUR CARD IN THIS POCKET. 



fOODRlD^^ 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




007 628 828 8 



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